Solving the Mystery of Chronic Pain: What is "Oxygen Starvation" in Your Body?
Pain affects our daily life in countless ways. When we hurt, even simple tasks can feel overwhelming. It’s easy to wish for a life completely free of pain.
But pain actually serves an important purpose — it’s the body’s alarm system, designed to warn us when something is wrong. Imagine if that alarm didn’t exist. You could burn or cut yourself without realizing it, and the situation could quickly become dangerous.
⚡ How Pain Works
The mechanism of pain is a lot like a fire alarm system
Detecting Smoke (Sensors): When an injury or other issue occurs somewhere in your body, specialized “pain sensors” in the area activate. They act just like a fire alarm’s smoke detector.
Sending the Alert (Nerves): The danger signal picked up by the sensors is converted into an electrical signal that travels through the “cabling” of your nerves. This is like the alarm signal traveling from the detector to the main control panel.
Assessing the Situation (Brain): Finally, your brain receives the signal and determines “what is happening and where,” which is when we perceive the sensation of “pain.” This is similar to the fire department headquarters receiving the alert and understanding the location and scale of the fire.
In this way, pain is a critical message from your body, telling you that “there’s an emergency!”
What’s interesting, following this analogy, is that even if the “cable” itself—the nerve—is compressed, it doesn’t automatically cause numbness or nerve pain. Many studies now show this is because the actual “smoke detectors” (the pain sensors) aren’t located on the nerve pathways.
🩺 Why “Nerve Compression” Isn’t Always the Cause
You might have heard that a herniated disc causes pain by “pressing on a nerve.”
But in reality, nerves don’t have pain receptors — so pressure alone doesn’t cause pain.
In fact, a 1995 study by Boos N. et al., which won the Volvo Award, showed that 76% of people without any back pain still had herniated discs on MRI scans.
This tells us that the presence of a disc herniation doesn’t necessarily equal pain.
Conversely, it’s not uncommon for people to suffer from numbness and pain even when no structural problems, like compression, are visible on medical images. This all points to a crucial conclusion: a structural abnormality does not necessarily equal the cause of symptoms.
💪 Where Pain Actually Comes From
As we’ve learned, nerves are like cables; they transmit signals but don’t create the sensation of pain on their own. The real work is done by sensors. So, where are they located?
The answer lies in the very tissues that enable our movement: our muscles, tendons, ligaments, and especially the fascia that wraps around them. Here is the step-by-step process of how pain signals are born in these tissues.
🌿 A Bodywork Approach to Pain Relief in Albuquerque
Dealing with chronic pain is like dealing with a tangled, brittle rubber band. A light touch won’t unravel the knots, but brute force will only cause more damage. The key is an approach that is both purposeful and respectful of the body’s limits.
Here in my Albuquerque practice, I use Functional Fascia Release to help restore your body’s natural balance. This method involves applying deep, consistent pressure—at times with the elbow—to carefully engage with restricted tissues. Think of this pressure not as aggressive, but as a focused dialogue with your muscles and fascia, encouraging them to let go of long-held patterns of tension.
By methodically releasing these restrictions, we improve circulation and allow your body to rediscover its inherent alignment, which is the true path to pain relief. My focus is always on working with your body to facilitate its own healing. If you’ve been searching for an effective, intelligent solution to chronic pain, I welcome you to experience how we can work together to bring lasting balance and ease back to your life.