Melissa Keroack gives vital information about pain, especially for those who have experienced a personal injury or if you are a physical therapist.

1. P H Y S I C A L T H E R A P Y T I P S :
T H I N G S Y O U S H O U L D K N O W A B O U T PA I N
M E L I S S A K E R O A C K :

2. • The most common
reason people attend
physical therapy is due
to pain.
• As a physical therapist
and as a patient, it’s
important to recognize
that pain is output from
the brain and that often
there are many factors
that contribute to
having pain in the body.

3. • Understanding pain is not an easy task, especially because we have
to understand how the brain works to first comprehend where pain
is coming from.
• Here are some key things you should know about pain…

4. • First, the degree of an injury does not always equal the
degree of pain one is experiencing.

5. • According to an article
published on
MoveForwardPT.com,
“Research has
demonstrated that we all
experience pain in
individual ways. While
some of us experience
major injuries with little
pain, others experience
minor injuries with a lot of
pain (think of a paper cut),”
(9 Things You Should Know
About Pain).

6. • In addition to this, there is
no way of knowing if
somebody has a high pain
tolerance, so measuring
and comparing pain
tolerance among
individuals is extremely
difficult.

7. • Second, psychological
factors play a large
part in accentuating
pain.
• Depression and
anxiety has been
proven to make pain
worse for certain
individuals.

8. • According to
MoveForwardPT.com, “A
recent study in the Journal
of Pain showed that
psychological variables that
existed prior to a total knee
replacement were related
to a patient’s experience of
long-term pain following
the operation,” (9 Things
You Should Know About
Pain).

9. • Furthermore, one’s social environment can also influence one’s pain
perception.
• In most cases, when somebody is at work or in a stressful situation, their
pain increases.

10. • This is because the
pain messages that
are generated in
stressful
environments are
rendered from the
brain as unsafe, which
shows our natural
human instinct of self-
protection.

11. • Lastly, diagnostic imaging may not always be accurate when determining the cause of
pain.
• According to MoveForwardPT.com, “A study performed on individuals 60 years
or older who had no symptoms of low back pain found that 36% had a herniated
disc, 21% had spinal stenosis, and more than 90% had a degenerated or bulging
disc, upon diagnostic imaging,” (9 Things You Should Know About Pain).

12. • For more information regarding facts you
should know about pain, please read
MoveForwardPT.com’s article here .