Pain is an uncomfortable experience for most people and can make exercise or daily activities much more difficult. It is common to think that when we experience pain when doing an activity, we should stop doing that particular activity. This is because pain means that we must be hurting or causing damage to our body right?

Well actually, that’s not always the case.

What we know with current research today is that pain in our body does not always necessarily mean there is damage to the tissues in our body. 

Why is this so?

The body is complex and there are many factors that contribute to why we experience pain. It may not always be an injury (such as rolling an ankle) but it can also be from factors such as increased levels of stress, poor sleep, unhelpful movements patterns, poor diet, low exercise and fitness. These are some of the factors that can contribute to our body becoming sensitive and increasing our likelihood of experiencing pain or increasing the current pain we may have.  

Think about this, have you ever had a headache before? If you have, can you remember what triggered it? Was it one of the factors mentioned above? We know that when we have a headache that structurally there isn’t anything wrong with our head or brain but yet, we still experience pain. This is like the rest of our body. Just like having a headache, we can experience pain anywhere in our body without having any structural damage or injury.