Persistent pain

Chronic or persistent pain is a common problem – at any one time, 20% of the world’s population has pain that has persisted for more then three months.

Evidence suggests that the best approach to management is quite different to the management for acute problems.

Research evidence shows that best management needs a multifaceted approach.  This may include a combination of medical, physiotherapy, and psychological help.

As a group of physios, at Adelaide West we have a real interest and enthusiasm for helping people with persistent pain.

A colourful beautiful brain picture

Our approach to helping people with persistent pain is also multi-faceted.

This includes:

  • identifying any ongoing ‘tissue’ problems that are present
  • identifying how much of the pain problem seems to be related to the ‘tissues’ compared to other sources
  • education to provide a working understanding of the biology of pain.  This page is a summary of the key messages that are worth understanding. Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense or sounds too hard – that’s our job to help you understand!

This knowledge is to give some understanding of why things can still hurt well after the injured area could be considered to have healed, and to give confidence to work with the pain rather than against it

  • graded motor imagery – a series of brain exercises to help improve and reorder the view or ‘representation’ of your body in the brain
  • sensible, graded exercise in the context of an understanding of the pain
  • goal setting and planning
Explain Pain Supercharged

We use resources to help everyone understand the basis of our treatment, like Explain Pain, Painful Yarns, and Protectometer: The Explain Pain Handbook.  These books can also be purchased in the clinic.

Here is a blog that I wrote about the Explain Pain revolution that you can read here.

We also recommend certain books like The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky and Change Your Thinking by Sarah Edelman.

You might be interested in having a look at some of the blog entries under the Explain Pain category for recent information.

Also, we have collated some great YouTube clips that you can find in the playlists our YouTube channel here.

Here is one of our favourite videos to explain the nature of pain in 5 minutes.

YouTube video

If you feel unsure if we can help with your persistent pain problem, why not give us a call and schedule a free phone call from a physio or free 15 minute preassessment to have a chat?