Chronic Pain

If you have chronic pain, then Chris can help you manage it.

Sometimes it’s as simple as getting a new perspective on the term “chronic.” If you’ve been labeled as chronic, then you know how devastating that can feel.

And if you labeled yourself as chronic, then you can also be stuck in a cycle that is perpetuated by that very title, “chronic.”

The general rule in the medical world is that if you have had pain for over 3-6 months, then it is considered chronic. The definition of chronic pain at Got Function is as follows and is also widely accepted by experts;

CHRONIC PAIN IS: 
Pain persisting longer than the natural course of healing associated with a particular type of injury or pathology.”   

This last definition does something very important for you. It actually explains the underlying reason why you are not getting any better.

The reason is that the natural healing course is constantly being interrupted!

The term “natural” implies that you are not doing things to aggravate the situation and you are giving the painful area a good environment to heal in.

Well what if you have low back pain and you play a sport that repeatedly requires you to bend, twist and move heavy objects?

That is definitely NOT a healing environment.

So as long as you play that sport, you can’t possibly have chronic pain because the natural course of healing never takes place. You will be stuck in a repetitive sub-acute cycle (it starts with acute, then goes to sub-acute, and finally chronic), and the treatment plan for sub-acute populations is very different than for chronic populations.

Chronic situations call for more physically aggressive programs than sub-acute protocols because of the advanced “healing” that has taken place in the older chronic injury. But if you are misdiagnosed as chronic when you are really sub-acute, and you engage in a chronic protocol, then you are very susceptible to overworking the area and injuring it even more.

Or, even more common, overworking it and keeping it in a chronic state of pain. Hmmm, interesting isn’t it?

The latest research also shows how important the brain is in chronic pain. Your thoughts can worsen or improve the level of your pain, and Chris knows which thoughts help the most and how to help you train your brain to eliminate pain.

The goal at Got Function is to work with your diagnosis and focus on what makes it worse, and what makes it better.

Wisdom shows that if you consistently do more of what makes it better than what makes it worse, you will get better, every time.

Chris does not care about sets and reps in the gym, he cares if you can go through all aspects of life while allowing your natural healing cycle to progress uninterrupted. If that means teaching you how to operate in the gym, at home, in the office, in the plane, car, walking the dog, everywhere and anywhere, then that’s what your program will focus on.

It is not unusual to spend the first few weeks practicing the best ways to cook, clean, sit, stand, lift, twist and shout.

And you know what? That is what it takes to heal most pain.