Do you feel stressed?
Some of you may say yes, absolutely. Life is crazy these days and we often feel mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted and stressed out. But, some of you may not really feel stressed at all. And some of you may even be asking, what does being stressed even have to do with pain?
Let’s dive in.
The reality is, our mental perception of stress doesn’t always match up with how stressed out your body is. Meaning, sometimes even when we don’t “feel stressed” (i.e. you don’t feel anxious, you’re sleeping well, and you are able to manage your day to day), that doesn’t necessarily mean that your body isn’t stressed. Stress comes in many different forms beyond just mental and emotional stress. Stress can be: physical, chemical, electromagnetic, nutritional, mental and thermal. Additionally, the way your body responds to these stressors can manifest in many different ways:
- Pain and muscle tension
- Poor Exercise recovery
- Decreased strength
- High blood pressure
- Weight gain
- Brain fog
- Headaches
- Digestive issues
- Fatigue
- Poor sleep
- Blood sugar dysregulation
- High cholesterol
Do you experience any of the symptoms above? Maybe you have multiple symptoms? Have you ever thought that your pain could be a result of an overflowing cup and impacted by too much or too little stress?
Defining Stress
Stress is defined as anything that brings us out of homeostasis (the body’s natural equilibrium where life is stable and safe). Stress can be good or bad – the dose determines the effect. Too much stress from the wrong stressors can lead to an overflowing cup, not enough stress from the right stressors can lead to an insufficient cup. Take a look at the following PDF graphic for some examples:
What causes pain?
When we think about pain, we usually assume it’s caused by an injury or damage to tissues. Take a look at this Ted Talk about the mysterious science of pain and how pain and tissue damage don’t necessarily go hand in hand.
We need to remember that the number one priority of the body is survival. Pain is a survival mechanism and can be influenced by our emotional state, memories, beliefs and expectations about pain. As Dr. Mosley and Butler say, “pain is an incredibly uncomfortable, though effective means for your brain to keep you safe.”
The above graphic depicts how neurology works. There are 3 essential steps:
- Your brain receives an input through sensory receptors (in this image it’s sight, but could be sound, taste, olfactory… anything)
- Your brain needs to interpret it, known as the integration phase, where it puts the sensory info into one image. Your brain asks “is this safe?
- Your brain then generates outputs based on the answer to that question.
- If the answer is yes, you will have pain free movement
- If the answer to the question is no, your brain will make you safer by stepping on the breaks, contributing to pain or decreased exercise output/strength
In speaking with Andrew Middleton, Director of Exercise and Assessment at WellWay, “Everyone is a unique snowflake. Your brain has its own fingerprint. Your experiences and past history impact how your brain interprets your environment. What gets people out of pain will always be different. It’s why some things work for one person but not others. The integration and interpretation phase mentioned above is always shaped by our background. The brain uses past experiences to decide if certain things are a threat or if they’re safe.”
Neurology Simplified: Outputs
Neurology can be complicated, so let’s use a common example. You probably joined WellWay to exercise more. So let’s look at how stress and pain can impact your exercise outputs.
When you exercise, you likely want to see an increase in performance outputs like strength, speed and good balance while experiencing pain free movement. These may all happen for you, but if your body is outside of homeostasis due to stress (from any source), you might instead experience things like pain, dizziness, fatigue, decreased exercise output, inflexibility, migraines and immobility. This is because your body is in survival mode and is trying to keep you safe.
How might your stressors be impacting your pain? We can evaluate how stressed your brain is through our Complimentary Initial Health Assessment process. We then bring your cup back into balance through bodily awareness and monitor symptoms and receptiveness to the plan through regular reassessments.
Once you have identified your cause/s of stress, you can then move on to customizing how you treat your pain – the technique will depend on you and your body.
Pain: What to do about it.
There are many common and obvious treatments to help manage pain:
- Massage therapy
- Foam rolling
- Physical therapy/personal training
- Stretching
- Heat/ice
- Meditation
- Cognitive behavior therapy
- Acupuncture
- Medication
The reason why these modalities work is because they make your brain feel safer, lowering the drive for survival, leading to a reduction in pain. What works for you depends on the unique “fingerprint” of your brain.
At WellWay, we like to think outside the box and have some additional methods for you to think about when it comes to managing pain. Let’s start with the concept of inflammation.
Inflammation is stressful and painful.
Causes of inflammation:
- Poor diet, particularly from excess sugar, processed foods and inflammatory fats
- Not eating enough vegetables
- Poor gut health
- Injuries
- Autoimmune diseases
- Chronic stress causing immune system dysregulation
- Chronic medical conditions
- Medications
- Alcohol
- Excess body fat, especially around the midsection
Reducing inflammation:
- Clean up your nutrition: reduce sugar and processed foods, increase vegetable intake
- Consider high quality supplementation (meet with a WellWay Wellness Advisor for a complimentary 15-minute supplement consultation)
- Incorporate recovery and stress management techniques
- Address chronic medical conditions
- Work with a Wellness Advisor to identify sources of inflammation in your life and ways to address it
Next, let’s look how your gut health can impact how you perceive pain.
Over 80% of the immune system is housed in the gut.
Poor gut health can be stressful due to:
- Leaky gut: leads to an inappropriate immune response, triggering inflammation
- Bacterial overgrowth: microbes release inflammatory byproducts
- Nutrient deficiencies
- There is a direct connection between the brain and the gut. A stressed out gut can lead to a stressed out brain
Addressing gut issues:
- Reduce processed foods and sugar
- Eat a variety of plant based foods rich in fiber
- Address food allergies and intolerances
- Consider GI testing with WellWay
- Work with a Wellness Advisor to identify the cause of your GI issues and provide a plan customized to you
Hormone disruptions can trigger stress and inflammation.
Cortisol:
- Fight or flight hormone
- Can be a trigger for chronic, stress related pain
Thyroid:
- Plays an important role in immune function
- Drives energy and metabolism
Sex Hormones:
- Low testosterone: can lead to an increase in body fat
- Estrogen/progesterone imbalances can be inflammatory
- PCOS leads to chronic, systemic inflammation
Insulin:
- Insulin resistance is inflammatory and a contributor to many chronic conditions (diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome)
Under recovery can be stressful and painful.
At WellWay, we offer a couple of unique therapy options for recovery.
Normatec Compression Therapy:
- Enhances blood flow to the legs to help with injury or exercise recovery
- Increases circulation throughout the rest of the body
- Aids in lymphatic drainage
Dry Float Therapy
- Works through sensory deprivation
- Helps with mental and physical stressors
- Removes stress from your cup and gives your brain a break to recharge
Supplementation to consider for inflammation reduction and stress management:
- Turmeric
- Fish oil/omega-3
- Magnesium
- L-theanine
- 5-HTP
- B-Vitamins
- Vitamin D – dose dependant on blood level
*Recommendations may vary depending on current medical history, speak with a Wellness Advisor for suggestions and review with your physician prior to taking if on medications.
Movement can make pain worse, or it can be therapeutic and help manage pain.
At WellWay, we take a neurology based approach to movement. Both the wrong movement AND lack of movement can contribute to pain. Therapeutic drills can help balance your cup, bringing you into homeostasis, which is where the body feels safe. Correcting imbalances may be important before moving on to certain movements.
Complete your complimentary personal training session for therapeutic drills customized to you.
What we want you to KNOW and DO.
KNOW:
- Pain is real and common
- Pain is an output from the brain trying to tell you to take action
- Everything can impact pain
- Your approach to pain management should be unique to you
How your body responds to your environment MATTERS when it comes to pain management.
DO:
- Assess overall stress – if you’re in pain, don’t assume it’s just from tissue damage – what else could be causing stress in your life?
- If what you’re doing isn’t working to manage pain, consider taking a different approach to see how your body responds
- Complete your complimentary Custom Health Plan appointments for a customized approach to manage stress, inflammation and pain
Complimentary Custom Health Plan appointments: What are they?
We know you came or may come to WellWay in the hopes of exercising more, but we want to help with so much more than that. To kick off the support, we offer three free appointments with our team that are 60 minutes each so we can spend time getting to know you before we offer customized recommendations.
Initial Health Assessment
First, we identify your health status to determine how you are currently responding to your environment through 8 different techniques:
- Body composition
- Seated to standing pulse
- Grip strength
- Perfusion index
- 02 saturation
- Balance
- Blood pressure
- Symptoms questionnaire
Through this process we will be able to identify your health status: are you balanced, overflowing or insufficient?
Complimentary Personal Training Session
Next, you will learn what movements are best for you depending on your current health status. During your complimentary training session, your exercise and movement specialist will take a neurology based approach to movement, measuring how your brain is responding to different drills recommended during the session. You will receive therapeutic drills unique to you that you can do on your own.
Custom Health Plan Appointment
During your Custom Health Plan appointment, your Wellness Advisor will discuss your goals and habits related to nutrition, stress management and sleep. They will tie everything together and you will walk away with your Custom Health Plan with recommendations in lifestyle and recovery, nutrition and supplementation, movement and exercise and will make additional service recommendations like lab testing, personal training and health and nutrition coaching depending on your goals and health history. The goal is to bring your cup into balance with recommendations made during your appointments, to ultimately help reduce pain as an outcome.
Lab Testing
At WellWay, we like to think of ourselves as detectives. We want to compliment the work you’re doing with your physician, while taking a deeper dive to try and get to the root cause of your ailments while providing practical and realistic solutions.
Our comprehensive lab testing can help give answers into things that have never been tested for you before that could be contributing to pain, like your gut health, nutrient deficiencies, genetics, inflammatory markers and maybe even thyroid and hormone health.
All of our lab panels come with a physician’s review and a 1-hour long interpretation with a Registered Dietitian to review your results and provide you with your action plan. Connect with a Wellness Advisor for recommendations, or click here to learn more: Lab Testing at WellWay.
Summary
Did you know pain could be so complex? Your pain is unique to you and impacted by your environment and past experiences. The action plan to manage your pain also needs to be individualized to you. At WellWay, we want to spend time with you through our Complimentary Custom Health Plan appointments so we can provide you with thoughtful, custom recommendations to help with your goals whatever they may be. We have additional services that can help with pain management like dry float therapy, Normatec Compression Therapy, massage, lab testing and a neurology based approach to personal training.
If you would like to get set up with your Custom Health Plan appointments or learn more about our services, please contact your Health Services Coordinator.
Cape Coral, FL: 239-341-6020
Babcock Ranch, FL: 239-946-2816
Liberty, MO: 816-608-6394
Plymouth, MN Studio: 612-662-4728