Tag Archive for: muscle tension

How Stress Leads to Pain

Three Ways Stress Can Cause Back Pain

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In our fast-paced world, stress has become an almost unavoidable part of daily life.

From work pressures to personal challenges, it can be quite overwhelming at times. But while stress is often thought of as a mental or emotional issue, its impact on the body can be profound. One of the most common physical complaints associated with stress is back pain. Whether it’s a dull ache or sharp discomfort, the connection between stress and back pain is real – and understanding why this happens is the first step toward finding relief.

Here are three ways that stress can lead to back pain:

1. Social conditioning: 

Many of us are taught from a young age that expressing emotions, particularly negative emotions, is “bad” or “unacceptable.” The result is that you may have learned to hold stress inside your body when faced with a stressful situation. Researchers who study this believe that the muscle tension we develop is the result of “unspoken social beliefs” that we adopted as children in order to feel accepted or liked. This pattern carries into adulthood and becomes embedded into our subconscious systems, i.e. our nervous system. Later on, when faced with certain types of stress, our muscles react based on how we’ve taught our nervous system to respond – which is typically to tense up. If you grew up learning to bury emotions and tension in your back muscles, your back can react in a painful way when you’re under stress .

2. Trauma Response: 

Trauma is often associated with a singular, catastrophic event like a car accident or a severe fall – but trauma can also occur in the form of cumulative “micro-traumas.” These micro-traumas are more subtle, often emotional or psychological in nature, and can go unnoticed for years. Research shows that the body can actually store memories of trauma – whether it was large or small – as part of the brain-body connection. And your body can remember this physical response for a very long time – even years after the event has passed. Our nervous systems (particularly the autonomic portion) can be triggered by emotional stress, and may reactivate old trauma responses that your body has stored.

This explains why for some people – physical symptoms of back pain can resurface any time their body perceives stress – especially if that’s where their trauma response occurred initially.

3. Environmental Stressors and Habits:

Your physical and postural habits have a huge impact not only in how your body feels from day to day, but in how well it recovers from pain or injury. For example, sitting too much is a number one cause of persistent and chronic back pain. And stress can play a role in this. When you’re stressed, it’s often accompanied by less motivation, and you may opt for unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as more TV and couch time. If being a homebody is how you react to stress – versus getting out for a walk or exercise – you’re  more likely to experience back pain when you’re stressed out.

Movement can Help:

Regardless of how or why stress impacts your body – there is one thing I know for certain – and it’s that movement helps. Physical activity helps to release tension stored in muscles, improves circulation, and promotes the release of endorphins which are your body’s natural pain killers and mood elevators. But movement also helps to break up the fight or flight response that can often occur in your nervous system when it’s under stress.

If you’ve got back pain and are wondering if stress could be part of it – consider talking to a mental health professional who can help uncover the source of your stress. 

And incorporate more movement and exercise in your left – which will help address both the mental and physical aspects of back pain. Now, if your back pain is so severe that movement or exercise is not an option – then seek the help of a mechanical pain/movement specialist who understands back pain. They will prescribe you healthy, corrective movement strategies designed to relieve your back pain – and likely some of your stress – since the two can be so linked.

Dr. Carrie Jose, Physical Therapist and Mechanical Pain Expert, owns CJ Physical Therapy & Pilates in Portsmouth and writes for Seacoast Media Group. To get in touch – or to request a copy of her free guide for back pain – CLICK HERE.

What is Dry Needling?

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At CJ Physical Therapy and Pilates, our goal is to help you live a pain-free life without pain pills or invasive procedures.

Trigger Point Dry Needling is one of several strategies we use to treat muscles that are extremely tense and in spasm. The spasm causes the muscle to be in constant tension which reduces blood flow, decreases oxygen, and can produce fibrotic unhealthy tissue over time (scarring). When a physical therapist inserts the very thin acupuncture needle (dry needle) into a knotted up muscle, it creates a local twitch reflex. Research shows that this not only relaxes the muscle, it breaks up the pain cycle by improving blood flow and oxygen to the muscle. This whole process helps to reduce and normalize inflammation in the area to promote healing. However, dry needling is not necessary for everyone, so it’s important that you know what it is and when it can be used to improve your health! Here’s our advice when it comes to pursuing dry needling treatment.

Work with a physical therapist to use dry needling in conjunction with movement based rehabilitation.

Dry needling can work wonders to relax your muscles. However, they’re just going to get tense and damaged again if you don’t learn how to use them properly and address any movement dysfunction that may be occurring. You don’t want to think of it as a quick fix! Dry needling is just the first step for some individuals who aren’t able to begin a physical therapy or movement regimen without first breaking up the pain cycles in the muscles that are prohibiting healthy movement. Dry needling serves as a “helper” to relax those muscles – and should be integrated with physical therapy treatment and strengthening activities such as Pilates.

Don’t be afraid of trying dry needling!

It can be uncomfortable for some people, but others say they feel no pain at all. It’s not dangerous and has lasting positive effects when used in conjunction with hands-on physical therapy under the direction of a specialist. Furthermore, our clients love it:

“After two back surgeries in my 20s and a new hip at 58, I figured I was lucky just to be walking. Dry needling has transformed the way I move. I’m more flexible. My walking stride has more length and I can stand longer.” – John

Do you have questions about dry needling? Want to see what a specialty physical therapy practice can do for you? We offer FREE Discovery Sessions right here in Portsmouth that give you the opportunity to ask any questions you may have! It’s a completely free, no-obligation appointment that will give you all the information you need to make the BEST decision for YOUR health. All you have to do is fill out this quick form, and we’ll be in touch!