Pain from injury Q

I found an article on the web which basically said that pain will often still be sensed from the site of an injury long after the injury itself has healed.

A friend of mine also had to 'train' her ankle to stop feeling pain for a while after she had recovered from the initial physical injury.

So if that is not uncommon how do you know when to start training again?

Anyone have experience with this kind of thing? What was your injury and how did you stop the pain response?

In my case I know i have some underlying biomechanical issues which made me susceptible to my injury to correct before I get back to it 100 %.

However, when they're resolved I don't want to still be nursing an injury if it's not really there anymore.

I also think it's strange that I feel the pain more now than I did when I first decided to start treating and resting it. Makes me think something else is going on.

As Ive said before muscle has memory, the Neurons have been damaged and are giving messages which are sometimes a little wrong. Working it without impact is the way forward with correct form its the impact that causes stress and with it bad form.

The real question is. Does an injury sight really heal or does it become an adaptation of what it was?

I have a vague memory of being told in biology that we're born with x number of nueron cells and we can not replace them when they are destroyed.

So would that mean the answer to your Q MD is that as far as the nervous system goes it's an adaptation rather than a replacement of the damaged cells?

Perhaps if the adaptation is good enough maybe that can be a type of healing itself though?

So I guess if I keep impact low the nervous system won't have any good reason to go nuts and make me uncoordinated as a consequence and hopefully it'll get better.

Thanks for explaining and please don't hesitate to correct me if my understanding is way off.  :)

CC you both

Md good point scarr tissue doesnt heal as before,

Hey Sharla, you're pretty switched on!!

It takes time for the body to adapt to the inflexible scar tissue, putting additional stress around the injury which you feel as pain either locally or referred. Scrap's very clever concept of low stress training allows for the area around the injury site to adapt at an optimum level; Developing strength and flexiblity without interferring with the correct biomechanics of the movement. :)

Thanks MD :)

I separated my shoulder once and had to deal with phantom pain while I was working on rehabing it to get it strong again. Trying to rehab when your getting pain that could or could not be phantom pain can be kind of scary.

What I did (and I hope some of this info helps) is almost immediately after my injury, I began moving the shoulder around as much as I could sticking to a pain free range of motion. I got yelled at a lot about it at first, but would find out later that my consistently moving the shoulder in the pain free zone and gradually pushing the range of motion contributed a lot to a quicker recovery. Now getting to the pain part. I started working with therapy bands at first and that didn't hurt much at all but as I began to increase the resistance on the bands and eventually graduate to using dumbbells, I really started having to make a lot of judgement calls on what I could and could not do because of the pain that I was feeling during my rehab sessions.

I did not actually go into physical therapy for the injury as I could not afford it with the type of insurance that I was carrying at the time so I self rehabed it at the health club that I was working at during that time. I was fortunate enough to have become friends with the chiropractor that kept his office in our facility and he was helping me with keeping tabs on my progress. I mostly went off of timelines and where the healing process should be at a given time following the injury to use as a guide. Dr. Kay, the chiropractor, told me that there would be pain during the process and that I would have to be able to deal with it.

As I worked through the pain, I gradually gained the ability to tell the difference between legitmate pain and the phantom pain. The phantom pain seemed to be a more general achey kind of pain where the legitimate pain of pushing too hard had a little more of an edge to it. The differences were still kind of subtle, though and I had doubts from time to time. In the end, I made mostly good decisions and successfully rehabed my shoulder back to normal.

I hope this helps a little. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll do my best.

Thanks FeuerFrei CC :)

That was very helpful and positive.

The pain I get now is more often achy (as you described for the false pain) at times when I never used to feel pain before I acknowledged my injury and began rest my knee.

The original pain I felt when I realized I had a problem tended to be on impact and as you say felt sharper.

You've given me some confidence that resting my knee has actually begun the healing process.

I will still try to move it in an impact free way as much as possible as you suggest and begin pushing the limits a bit when I'm miving in a way which sems more or less correct.

Maybe I can use that sharp pain you're referring to and whether or not I am moving in a way which seems biomechanically normal as a way to guage my recovery.

You've made me feel better thanks :)

Just out of curiousity did you get rid of the phantom pain completely after a while?

Yes, Sharla. The phantom pain did go completely away for me. It did linger for almost 6 months, so try not to let it dishearten you.

Thanks FeuerFrie :)