Alternative Pain Relief
Explaining Pain and It's Causes

Understand pain, how pain works and it's causes ...

This will help you to understand how and why alternative pain relief therapies work, and will help you to choose the right natural health remedies for you...

If you are suffering form any sort of pain, you sincerely have my sympathies… I know what it is like, and how debilitating it can be…

Millions of people do suffer from chronic pain…

Pain can affect your ability to:

• work
• socialise
• exercise
• and just live a ‘normal’ life

If you are lucky, pain might just be short term, something like:

• a minor injury
• cuts
• grazes
• strains and sprains

More serious injuries, such as fractures, or broken bones might take weeks, or even months to heal…

There are also many illnesses and conditions where pain features as a major part of the illness:

• cancer
• arthritis
• muscle disorders
• neuralgia
• fibromyalgia
• shingles
• and many more…

Explaining Pain

• There are all different kinds of pain:
  • throbbing
  • stabbing
  • burning
  • aching
• It can be difficult to explain or describe pain precisely, and even to pinpoint the exact location of your pain … This is quite normal.
• Sometimes pain can be ’referred pain’, and is not felt at the site of the actual problem. An example of this is a pain in the arm during a heart attack.
• Pain is the body’s own warning system that something is wrong.
• Pain is sent by the brain to warn the body to take action.
• The actual pain is caused by the nervous system.




• Sometimes, pain has a simple cause and remedy.
• For example:
  • you touch something hot
  • the brain sends pain signals through the nerves
  • you pull away
  • you are not badly burnt
• Unfortunately though, pain isn’t always as clear cut as that…
• Sometimes, especially with long term illnesses, injuries and conditions, pain continues beyond the original problem…
• Alternative pain relief can help to address this…

Explaining Long Term Pain

• Research shows that long term pain causes an actual ’re-wiring’ of the brain.
• This means that the same pain signals continue to travel along the nerves – even after the initial cause has gone!
• This is simply because the brain’s own electronic circuits have been ’scrambled’ by the long term pain. The brain now ’expects’ the pain messages along the nerves … and continues to send and receive these.




• This pain can be continuous, or can become more easily set off. These can be set off by:
  • slight temperature changes
  • light touch
  • vibration
  • tiredness
  • other illnesses
  • hormonal changes
  • hunger
  • dehydration
• Many people, especially arthritis sufferers, find their pain and symptoms become worse when they are:
  • tired
  • stressed
  • in certain weather conditions or temperature changes
• I certainly find that these factors do all affect my own joint pain from M.E.
• This pain is all from simple, physical causes, but substances in the brain can help to ’block’ these pain messages along the nerves.
• Endorphins (sometimes called ’happy hormones’), Dopamine and Adrenaline can all ’block’ pain and soothe symptoms.
• This is why your emotions can affect your pain…
  • If you are happy or relaxed you feel less pain
  • being depressed or stressed makes you feel your pain more intensely
• This is also why sportsmen can get an injury, but not feel it until afterwards – the adrenaline is blocking the pain.
• Many alternative pain relief therapies use these sorts of ideas to help you ’rewire’ your brain circuits, to stop or improve pain.

Psychological Reaction to Pain

• I think the psychological link to pain is an important one to make, especially when dealing with alternative pain relief treatments.
• Pain, quite naturally, can cause anxiety and distress, and can lead to great fear.
• Your past experiences with pain can hugely influence your physical and psychological response to pain now.
• The intensity of pain can also depend on the significance that you mentally place on the pain, and on the causes of the pain.
• People feel the same, minor pain much more intensely if they are being tortured, than if the same pain had an accidental or innocent cause.
• In the same way, you would suffer much more from a pain that you believed was caused by cancer, than if you knew that the same pain had an easily cured cause.
• In one experiment on patients with chronic back pain, time spent thinking about their back pain caused their actual back muscles to become tense.
• Very strong pain relief drugs, like morphine, don’t actually take away the physical pain. The pain is still felt, but the mental and psychological association is separated from the pain…
• Now, the pain is not registered as ’unpleasant’ in the brain, and you can actually become indifferent to it!
• This is why so many of the alternative pain relief treatments are able to use relaxation methods, to effectively re-train, or ’re-wire’ the brain into accepting pain in a ‘different light’…

I have found huge successes with alternative pain relief treatments personally, by using hypnotherapy to ‘re-wire’ or ‘re-train’ my brain to react differently to pain.

This technique uses visualisation of your pain, and of your own brain and nervous system to ’dial down’ the pain…

After my very first session, I was able to ’dial down’ my pain from 60% to 20% …! Which even I found unbelievable!

Now I am starting to be able to use the ’dial’ in my mind when I am out and about, (without the hypnotherapy session) to control pain and help me to carry on with my every day life.

If you think it sounds unlikely, do just give it a chance and try it for yourself… you might be very surprised to find how well it actually works for you…

These are both very effective sessions (and very similar)...

Pain Relief
Learn hypnosis for pain relief

Chronic Pain Management
Learn to use hypnosis for chronic pain management

Always remember to consult your healthcare provider before taking any decisions regarding your health.

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Learn more about holistic pain relief options

Learn more about the different options for pain relief, including problems and side effects of conventional pain killers.

Read about natural back pain relief

Return to the main page for the Widespread and Topical Pain Relief Guide for Alternative and Holistic Pain Relief.

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