Why Your Pain Is Not Going Away: The Lymphatic System, External Stressors, & Emotions
Key Points
- Inflammation in one area of the body can easily spread to other areas of the body via the lymphatic system; i.e. gut health can have a huge impact on musculoskeletal injuries.
- Stress, specifically an environment full of external stressors (work, family, relationships) is counter-productive to physical healing.
- Your body cannot recover fully when your emotions and thoughts are consistently negative
Intro
As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, I work with many patients each day who are in pain. Certain injuries and conditions heal quicker than others. Most tissue injuries are about 80% healed within the first 6 weeks after the injury. If you are still experiencing significant pain after these initial 6 weeks, there are likely some other underlying factors to your condition. Pain is much more complicated than just an injury to the bodily tissues and is influenced by so many other factors.
Pain is influenced by stress, nutrition, hydration, inflammation, lifestyle factors, thoughts, emotions, and much more. Let’s dive in and discuss how these different factors can influence pain and recovery.
The Lymphatic System
The lymphatic system is one of your body’s major detoxification systems. We’ve all heard that cancer easily spreads via the lymph system. What makes you think other inflammatory cells can’t spread via the lymph as well? Dr. Perry Nickelston has explored how the lymph system affects musculoskeletal conditions. He makes the argument that visceral inflammation within the gut, can enter the lymphatic system and spread to other areas of the body. In a recent podcast, he used a great analogy comparing the body to an ecosystem within a fish tank. Let’s pretend our muscles are the bigger fish, our bones are the coral, our organs are the smaller fish, our skin is the glass, and our lymphatic system is the water. We can spend all the money we want on food for the fish (supplements, fruits and vegetables, whole foods, etc.) but if we never filter and take care of the water, everything else in the tank dies.
Now you’re probably wondering how we directly address our lymphatic system. There are certain techniques of lymphatic massage and other manual techniques to specifically address the lymph. Your nutritional habits also directly correlate to the inflammation that could be spread through the lymph system. However, perhaps two of the best things you can do are to clean up any external stressors within your environment, and change your attitude about life and recovery.
Stress: External Stressors
We are all stressed to some extent. Stress is a normal part of life. However, in a chronic state of stress, our body creates excess cortisol (a stress hormone). Increased cortisol levels have a direct impact on our overall health and can lead to decreased immune function, brain fog, increased weight gain, depression, and much more.
Minimizing and getting rid of external stressors is key to recovery. If you want your tissues to heal, you need to provide your body with an environment that cultivates healing. A cortisol-filed body with a weakened immune system is not going to heal as fast as you might like. Your pain may be directly related to your external stressors. In addition to external stressors, our emotions play a critical role in recovery and pain management.
Emotions
There is plenty of research to show that your attitude toward recovery has a significant impact on your actual recovery. It has consistently been shown in the literature that patients who believe they are going to get better and have a positive outlook on recovery, improve much faster and to a greater extent than patients who have a negative outlook on recovery.
Think of the placebo effect. All medical research, and any other type of research for that matter, has to consider and account for placebo. If a patient strongly believes that a certain intervention is going to help them recovery, it probably will.
Human beings are naturally biased creatures. Throughout life, we have all developed a subconscious construct and set of ideas and beliefs. We use our past experiences to subconsciously judge and analyze the world we live in. Our emotions will not only affect our recovery, but can directly trigger pain as well. There are studies showing that simply thinking about a particular negative experience can trigger a pain response in the brain. Don’t believe me, just go check out some of the work by Lorimer Mosely.
Conclusion
Taking care of your overall health and wellness is critical to recovery and pain-relief. You may not be able to drastically change the natural tissue remodeling process, but always remember that you have the power to influence your lymphatic health, decrease your external stressors, and control your emotions. Understanding and learning to manage these things will help you recover faster and better manage your pain.
As always, please share this with friends and family. Feel free to reach out to me with comments or questions. You can always schedule an appointment with PhysioStrength here.
Sincerely,
Dr. Connor Naccarato, DPT, MTC, CSCS