MECHANICAL VS. CHEMICAL PAIN: UNDERSTANDING YOUR PAIN

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MECHANICAL VS. CHEMICAL PAIN UNDERSTANDING YOUR
PAIN
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Understanding Your Pain to Establish a Proper
Treatment Pain is your bodys way of telling you
that something has gone wrong. It is a warning
signal to change what you are doing before damage
progresses.  Not all pain is the same, nor is all
pain bad.  Knowing what type of pain, you have is
of utmost importance for, without the proper
diagnosis, you cannot receive the proper
treatment.  Too often we assume that all pain is
inflammatory and overuse NSAIDs and steroids, but
most musculoskeletal disorders are mechanical and
will not respond to these treatments. When your
pain continues, instead of the anti-inflammatories
not being strong enough, could it be that your
pain is not from inflammation?
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Chemical versus Mechanical Pain? Mechanical
Pain occurs when stress is placed on a joint or
soft tissue, such as when you bend your finger
all the way back or stretch your calf.  If you go
back far enough, you will feel pain.  As soon as
you release, the pain immediately abates.  There
is no injury or damage to the tissue.  Mechanical
pain arises when a mechanical force stresses a
tissue.  It is resolved when a different movement
or positions remove the mechanical stress.
Bending your finger backward produces a
mechanical stress that causes pain.  Movement in
opposite direction relieves the pain.  Mechanical
pain is usually intermittent, but it can be
constant as when the stress is constant holding
your finger backward.  When you have pain that
comes and goes or changes with different
movements and/or positions it is mechanical.
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Chemical pain, on the other hand, is caused by
the bodys inflammatory response to injury.  It
is a complex chemical reaction and occurs to aide
tissue damage by releasing chemicals from the
blood, fibroblasts and local macrophages to clean
up the area and start the healing process.  An
example of chemical pain would be hitting your
thumb with a hammer or a toothache.  Chemical
pain is described as throbbing, constant and does
not change with movement.  Pain that comes and
goes cannot be chemical.  Back pain that is worse
with sitting and bending but a bit better with
walking is not chemical or inflammatory pain,
because it changes with movement and will not
respond to chemical treatments such as
anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers.
Inflammation can be uncomfortable, but it is part
of the miraculous natural healing process. It
usually lasts only a few days to weeks.  Symptoms
of a localized injury that continue after a few
weeks are the result of re-injury / re-tearing of
poorly healed tissue or an unresolved mechanical
problem.
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• Examples of mechanical injuries
• Herniated disc
• Dislocations
• Meniscal or labral tears
• Scarred and shortened muscle or tendons that have
  healed but are not fully recovered.
• Initially, these conditions may have an
  inflammatory component and may be helped by
  anti-inflammatories early on, but the main cause
  of pain will be mechanical, not chemical.

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Treatment Differences Mechanical pain only
responds to a mechanical treatment change of
position or movement. Mechanical treatment is
targeted to a specific joint or tissue to change
the current mechanical position or property of
that tissue. For example, a shoulder dislocation
requires morphine.  But if you are able to
relocate the shoulder, 90 of the pain is
resolved because the mechanical stress is
removed.   Differentiating between pain that is
caused by a mechanical or chemical irritation is
critical because you have to know if you need to
remove a mechanical stress or an inflammatory
component to get relief.  The two treatments are
totally different. Only a correct diagnosis will
produce the proper treatment and outcome.
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