5 Things About Chronic Pain Your GP may not have told you shares an osteopath London

As an Osteopath in London treating patients who are suffering with some form of pain, I am always interested in research into pain management and keeping across approaches to pain recovery.

SIRPA, which stands for Stress Illness Recovery Practictioners Association, is an organistaion that has a mission to engage health professionals and train them in an approach to chronic pain recovery to help shift their patients from living with pain to living without it.

SIRPA have produced an interesting report that covers ‘5 Things Your GP Won’t Have Told You About Chronic Pain’ that can be downloaded from their website.

What is chronic pain?

Simply put chronic pain is any pain in your body that has lasted more than around 12 weeks. It can last for months and years. It can often start after suffering from an initial injury such as back spasm or ankle sprain and then continue from there. However a lot of the time the pain can be unexplained and could be because of posture problems or poor sleeping habits.

5 things your GP won’t have told you about chronic pain

SIRPA have outlined 5 major differences in their approach to chronic pain and that of current mainstream medicine.

These differences support SIRPA’s position that once physically damaging conditions such as cancer and autoimmune diseases have been ruled out that most causes of persistent or recurrent pain are not caused by something being wrong with the part of the body that hurts, rather by the brain.

In summary,  SIRPA highlights the following 5 points about pain

1. Fear of pain and causing further damage can result in pain increasing
2. A belief that there must be a physical cause for a pain often results in critical underlying factors being missed

3. Pain can be triggered by the brain despite there being no physical trauma

4. A patient’s belief that their pain is due to a physical cause often leads to their pain being ‘managed’ with full resolution being less likely

5. SIRPA recognises that although chronic pain is a result of physiological changes that occur after the emotional brain is triggered by emotions, this is an unconscious and automatic response.

If you are suffering pain or discomfort and you would like further information on how I may help you or to book an Osteopathy appointment at one of my osteopathy clinics in London please feel free to send me a message or call me on 020 8815 0979.