Pain is often misunderstood. It can be hard to relieve pain if you aren't familiar with how pain works. For most of us, pain is just pain. We know how it feels and wish to be rid of it. To get rid of stubborn pain, you first need to understand where it's coming from, which is more complex than you think. Pain in your head may not come from inside your head, even though it feels that way. Pain in your gut may be uncomfortable emotions causing hormonal changes, and pain radiating down your leg may be induced by a pinched nerve in your lower back.

Although the following information primarily provides natural alternatives for head, neck, and shoulder pain, it also applies to pain occurring anywhere in your body. Chronic pain is particularly troublesome for those of us living with Herpes Simplex Virus, as pain can be the cause and the result of a herpes breakout. 

Symptoms of Chronic Pain

An aching, stabbing, sticking, pulling, shooting, burning, throbbing, aching, or stinging sensation that lasts for more than a day or two (or keeps returning) and is not relieved, or at least not for very long, by ordinary methods, such as pain relievers, ice, heat, or rest. Other chronic pain symptoms may include blurry vision (usually in one eye), lightheadedness, dizziness and equilibrium problems, nausea, tension, a cluster or a migraine headache, sleep disturbances, lack of confidence, and low self-worth, leading to depression.

How Pain Works In the Body

Describing the pain cycle could get overly technical, involving words like axons, dendrites, synapses, neurotransmitters, A-Delta neurons, and C sensory neurons. However, it is enough to understand the simple basics of how pain is transmitted in the body.

Let's say you burn your finger. The pain impulse (the electrical signal from the nerves involved) rushes right through the nerve's cell body and heads for the spinal cord. Why the spinal cord? The spinal cord is the highway electrical impulses travel to communicate what hurts, where, and how much.

Your brain receives the message and transmits the information to your thalamus, a part of your brain with regions assigned to different sensory systems. A message is sent from these regions, down your spine, and out to your finger about your burn as to whether it stings just a little or a lot.

Whenever you experience any pain, this relay race takes place. Emotions can lead to the dysfunction of the immune system. For example, those who are sad often catch a cold.

Your emotions affect your hypothalamus, a part of your brain closely associated with the amygdalae. The amygdalae are responsible for the "fight or flight" response. It can instantaneously direct blood to and from areas of your body at will, causing back pain, cold hands, nerve dysfunction, and tension headaches.

It may interest you to know chronic pain reduces brain cells, which causes even more pain. The good news is that brain cells can regrow. This information doesn't provide you with a ticket for more stress but to realize the extensive damage stress can cause. Pain is stressful, and stress causes pain. So you'll have to get rid of the stress to get rid of the pain and regrow your brain cells, pretty much in that order.

Common Types of Pain

• Arthritis (or arthritic type disorders)
• Skeletal and muscular abnormalities or injuries
• Carpel Tunnel Syndrome
• Spinal cord (myelopathy) or nerve root compression (stenosis)
• Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (previously known as RSD: Reflex Sympathy Dystrophy)
• A migraine or a tension headache
• Sciatica and postherpetic neuralgia
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• TMJ (Temporomandibular Disorder)
• Pelvic disorders
• Cancer 
• Sinus inflammation
• Diabetic neuropathy
• Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Common Causes of Pain

• Chemical sensitivities
• Food sensitivities
• Toxins
• Emotional stress (repressed, suppressed, or ongoing negative emotions) leads to hypoxia (low oxygen, specifically in muscles)
• Iron deficiency (Anemia, not necessarily revealed in blood tests)
• Anxiety and depression
• Systemic illnesses, including colds and flu
• Poor posture
• Smoking 
• Low-pressure pain threshold 
• Poor self-accessed health (feel you have poor health even though you may not, which causes stress) 
• Being over-weight (including Normal Weight Obesity) 
• High levels of substance "P."
• Metabolic disorder and insulin resistance
• Chronic dehydration 
• Anything that causes us too much emotional or physical pressure
• Mitochondrial Dysfunction (not enough energy in your cells)
• Viruses, including the Herpes Simplex Virus, can also cause a headache, a migraine, postherpetic neuralgia, and chronic fatigue
• You may also have negative spiritual attachments. 

Psychological, Spiritual & Emotional Causes of Physical Pain for Certain Conditions (Generally Speaking)

• Headache - Fear and negative self-talk.
• Migraines - Feeling rushed, driven by life, and sexual frustration
• Neck pain - Stubbornly holding on.
• Upper-back - Lack of emotional support, withholding of love (yours or theirs.) 
• Lower back - Lack of financial support, fear over money issues, self-punishment.
• Mid-back - Guilt and living in the past
• Stomach - Feeling you have no control.
• Genitals - Emotional resistance
• Feet - Unable to stand up for yourself
• Rheumatoid arthritis - Feeling burdened, dumped on, squeezed by demands
• Arthritis in the fingers - Feeling victimized, unloved, and without a support network. These feelings can lead to critical thinking and wanting to point blame. 
• Osteoporosis - For some reason, there isn't enough mental flexibility. Refusal to learn life's lessons or grow in positive ways

Associated Chakras: The 2nd and 4th (back), 3rd (overall pain), 6th (a headache) Chakras/The Indigo, Green, Yellow, and Orange Aura Color Personalities

Associated Temperaments: All but Melancholic

Associated Energy Meridians: Stomach (neck), Heart (mid-back), Urinary/Bladder (lower back), and Gallbladder/Liver (muscle)

Understanding Chronic Pain Syndrome

Pain is your body's way of telling you there is something wrong. It is a plea for you to sit up and take notice. Something out of kilter needs to be dealt with emotionally or physically. If you did not have pain, you would not know what to avoid and continually hurt yourself.

You've probably experienced the stiff pain of a pulled muscle, the sting of a scorched fingertip, or the throb of an occasional headache and survived. It's altogether different to live with chronic pain, which can be disabling, as you may know, either from experience or from watching someone else suffer.

When afflicted with seemingly endless pain, fear often becomes a component. Not knowing how to control pain or when it will end can raise anxiety levels, which causes tremendous stress, generating more pain. Fear may also be what caused the pain in the first place. For most of us, pain is scary.

To understand how pain operates in the body, you must be willing to delve into feelings possibly causing it or making it worse. Emotions are almost always a part of experiencing pain. When you're in pain, it's easy to experience a wide range of negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and hopelessness, which can worsen the pain.

If you experience chronic pain, it is easy to become isolated, either out of depression or the inability to get around quickly. Isolation further leads to negative emotions and, often, low self-esteem, which increases pain levels even more. Pain can hinder relationships, damaging healthy communication and sexual intimacy due to fear of discomfort. It is difficult to voice pain, concerns, and fears to a partner. If a partner is not compassionate or understanding, it leads to more stress, which causes more pain.

Furthermore, chronic pain causes stress hormones to be produced at higher levels in the body, which creates a disturbance that weakens your immune system and furthers the chances of experiencing even more pain. Usually, the brain diverts pain symptoms so that we can get on with our lives. Pain symptoms are more pronounced when the "shut off" mechanism is faulty. Subsequently, stress and subsequent pain can become a vicious cycle.

How Is Chronic Pain Diagnosed?

Fractures, infections, cancer, severe disk damage, arthritis, stenosis, dehydration, tumors, and herniation are all diagnosed through imaging with MRI, X-ray, CT scans, and lab tests, as well as gauging pain levels through verbal description. Pain with no diagnosed physical cause is termed psychogenic, and it can make you feel like you're crazy when you're not.

Who Is Likely to Suffer From Chronic Pain?

• People who have accumulated tension caused by life events that lead to negative emotions, such as rage, anger, sadness, and anxiety, are likely to experience chronic pain.
• Those who have an inadequate stress response to strains of everyday life
• Those who were abused or suffered traumatic experiences in childhood
• People who demand too much from themselves (perfectionistic, empathetic, self-sacrificing, people-pleasing folks) tend to experience more pain. These pressures are self-imposed. These can cause a sea of negative emotions, especially fear and rage. Fear of being overwhelmed by any of these personality types can cause your brain to create a distraction by reducing blood flow to specific body parts, which causes pain. Anxiety Sensitivity is a cause of pain in individuals who have been told they have no anatomical reason for their suffering.
• People who have reduced oxygen levels and increased toxicity due to environmental toxins or Leaky Gut Syndrome experience more tension, muscle pain, and spasms.
• People who are physically unfit from living a sedentary lifestyle experience more pain. When muscles are out of shape, they cannot support the body's frame, which causes physical stress and discomfort.

Pain Triggers

• Obesity (being over-fat)
• Being a couch potato (not moving enough)
• Eating a poor or unbalanced diet, food sensitivity, imbalanced gut bacteria, and digestive enzyme deficiency
• Poor sleep
• Chronic stress or sweeping stress "under the rug"
• Leaning over a keyboard or cell phone for too long
• Physical over-exertion (whatever that is for you)

Common Types of Pain (In Detail)

Headache

Actual headache pain is in the temple or forehead. Changes in hormones, diet, and dehydration may cause it. Individuals with hypoglycemia, chronic stress, muscle tension, high blood pressure, food allergies, and misalignments of the spine who use Tylenol and other NSAIDs regularly experience more frequent headaches. Referred pain from another body part (neck, shoulders, or back) can be experienced as headaches or migraines. The pain in your head or neck may also come from your back or shoulders. 

Severe Tension Pain Above the Shoulders

You feel a neckache at the base of the neck, behind the eye sockets, and in the shoulder muscles. Neckaches can be caused by poor posture, long periods of sitting, emotional stress, and past trauma. As with a headache, the pain in the neck may also be coming from your back or shoulders. There's a reason why we call people who make us tense "a pain in the neck." Feel along the ridge of your shoulder muscle from your neck to your shoulder to test this theory. Are there any tight, painful spots? How about alongside your spine about mid-back? Yes? There's your neckache. It means your headache or neckache was referred from somewhere else in the body. Getting more sleep, meditation, hypnosis, Trigger Point Therapy, journaling, counseling, and acupuncture can help relieve stress causing physical pain.

Work-Related Pain

Continuous neck and arm movement for more than an hour daily can cause pain, especially when working with arms extended above the shoulders, which causes stress, frequent headaches, and fatigue. Having your neck extended more than not will also cause abnormal wear and tear to the cervical (neck) spine and may cause Burning Mouth Syndrome.

Sitting 95% of the time at work causes muscle stiffness. Sitting 75% of the time at work is OK but not great. Going from a mobile job to a sitting one (or vice versa) can cause muscle and joint problems.

Employees who can't use their skills, have unhelpful co-workers, have low job security, and have little job satisfaction experience more pain.

As a female, if you feel your workload is too extreme, you will experience musculoskeletal pain in your neck. You will also experience pain if your workload increases and you lack support. As a male, you are better at handling this type of stress.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome 

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, previously known as Reflex Sympathy Syndrome, is another syndrome that doctors have difficulty treating because they don't understand what causes it. This syndrome begins with significant damage to an extremity (a hand or foot). It sometimes starts with the wearing of a cast. Pain radiates from the injury site, from a foot to the leg or the hip. In 5% of patients, the pain continues long after the wound has healed and the cast removed.

Skin color changes to blue or red. The skin feels hot but colder as the syndrome progresses and becomes chronic. As the immune system shifts into overdrive, markers in the blood are detectable. Dramatic improvements are possible, but if the condition is not resolved within 18 months, it usually becomes a lifetime condition.

It was recently reported that the brains of those with CRPS show changes in the brain's white matter, specifically the fibers that deliver messages between neurons. Brain scans reveal atrophy of the neurons in the brain's gray matter, consistent with those suffering from chronic pain. The study's investigator is Vania Apkarian, a physiology professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Medical treatments involve physical therapy, sympathetic nerve blockers, electrical impulses, biofeedback, diet and nutrition, and spinal cord stimulation.

Arthritic Pain

Most folks believe the wear and tear of the joint causes arthritis. They're right, but when joint cartilage is stressed or hurt, what makes it arthritic is certain chemicals in the body triggered by the inflammatory response. Your joint fills with fluid to provide extra lubrication, which contains acid-like chemicals to dissolve any tiny bone fragments from injury to the bone. If these chemicals aren't turned off, the inflammatory response continues. The substances begin to eat away at healthy bone and cartilage. These chemicals can also burn nerve endings, which causes pain experienced in your joints. Specific foods can turn off this chemical response, stopping the pain and further joint damage.

Interstitial Cystitis

Interstitial Cystitis is bladder pain without cause. Of course, there's a cause! If you suffer from bladder pain, please see Irritable Bladder Syndrome. 

Tension Myositis Syndrome

Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) refers to pain caused by emotion. Myofascial Pain Syndrome(MPS) refers to tightly knotted and oxygen-deprived muscles (driven by emotion, trauma, or physical injury), leading to pain that can be referred to other body areas. Myofasciitis is a term used to describe chronic pain in the network of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and connective tissue. These are tissues that hold the body together. TMS can lead to MPS.

If you notice a relationship between your pain and your emotions or stress or have a flare-up of pain right before or after a stressful situation, you may have TMS. If you are a perfectionist, self-critical, empathic, or people-pleasing, or avoid confrontation like the plague, you may be prone to Tension Myositis Syndrome. If your doctor has given you a thorough evaluation and found nothing wrong with you, but you still experience pain, you may have Tension Myositis Syndrome. Suppose you have a history of tension headaches, heartburn, indigestion, dizziness, migraines, carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive strain injury, hives or rashes, cold hands, teeth clenching (or grinding), or tinnitus unrelated to neurological disease. In that case, you may have Tension Myositis Syndrome. If your pain persists, even with conventional therapies and treatments, you may have Tension Myositis Syndrome.

The Spiritual or Psychological Cause for Tension Myositis Syndrome: Feeling like you or everything around you is falling apart.

Associated Chakras & Aura Color Personalities: All but primarily the 4th and 6th Chakras (the Green and Indigo Aura Color Personalities)

Associated Temperament: All (mostly Phlegmatic)

Associated Energy Meridians: Gallbladder Meridian and Liver

You can find The Tension Myositis Syndrome Questionnaire at http://mindbodymedicine.com. A score of 12 or higher implies a high possibility that Tension Myositis Syndrome causes the pain you experience. The good news? You can become utterly pain-free by acknowledging your emotions.

Mysofascial Pain Syndrome

Myofascial Pain Syndrome is the leading cause of pain. It develops in stages.

Stage 1: Unacceptable emotions are often suppressed to get on with life and not fall apart.

Stage 2: Physiological changes resulting from emotional stress, whether you feel stressed or not. 

Stage 3: Physical symptoms, such as headaches, muscle aches, nerve pain, or digestive complaints. 

Stage 4: Full-blown syndromes, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia Syndrome, Arthritis, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. 

All of the above stages (1-4) relate to Tension Myositis Syndrome (pain caused by emotion).

By the time you arrive at Stage 3, tight knots and bands of muscle and nerves have become used to firing signals to your spine, which sends messages to the brain interpreted as pain. These tight muscles and nerves, painful in and by themselves, also send pain messages to different parts of your body. For example, you have a trigger spot in your shoulder but a terrible headache. It is in Stage 3 that Myofascial Pain Syndrome sets in. Stage 3 may develop into an autoimmune disorder if it lasts longer than three months.

By the time you reach Stage 4, several of these myofascial spots, or trigger points, are bothering you simultaneously, causing many symptoms.

The Spiritual or Psychological Cause for Tension Myositis Syndrome: Feeling like you or everything around you is falling apart.

Associated Chakras: The 4th and 6th chakras. All play a role, primarily the Green and Indigo Aura Color Personalities.

Associated Temperament: All (mostly Phlegmatic)

Associated Energy Meridians: Gallbladder and Liver

See The Aura Energy Self-Test to discover your aura color and holistic alternatives for balancing your bio-electrical energy field. 

When You've Been Told There is Nothing Physically Wrong

There may come a time when you will have to stop looking for an illness to have caused your symptoms. When lab tests continue to reveal nothing, even though you feel like dying, it may be time for another viewpoint. You may have to accept that your symptoms are emotionally based. Emotion-based syndromes do not mean that you are crazy or that it's "all in your head". It means that your emotions manifest themselves physically, and it is time to begin the journey of loving yourself enough.

Many people report that much of their pain if not all, disappears once they realize it's caused by emotions or the fear something is wrong with them physically. Even from the distant past, painful memories can live in your brain's limbic system long past when your body tissues have healed and memories are put away. It may be helpful to begin to work on eliminating those things in life that cause you excess or undue emotional stress and focus on things you enjoy. See Pinpointing Stress to inventory of those things that may be causing underlying stress in your life. 

Holistic Alternatives for Chronic Pain & Headache Syndrome

Holistic Alternatives for Chronic Pain & Headache in General

Avoid pain-causing trigger foods: Lactose in milk, eggs, peanuts, gluten (found in wheat and other grains), walnuts, cashews, fish, shellfish, soybeans, chocolate, aged cheese, red wine, high fructose corn syrup, hot dogs, bologna, pepperoni, salami, summer sausage, chicken livers, black tea, cola and coffee, figs, raisins, papaya, avocados, red plums, herring, dried beans, anything pickled or marinated, sourdough bread or crackers, any more than a half cup of citrus fruit each day, any more than half of a banana each day, and sour cream. Remove each pain-causing trigger food for two weeks. You can go cold turkey by removing all of them at once or one at a time. Then, begin adding them back into your diet one at a time and watch for symptoms. You may not experience the symptoms for a day or two. It can take up to 48-72 hours for a sensitive reaction. For example, when allergic to chocolate, many people say they get a headache the next day. A rapid heart rate can be a symptom of a food reaction. Check your heart rate within 10 minutes of eating a suspected trigger food.

• Avoid an abundance of red meat. Protein causes acids in the body to rise, leading to Metabolic Acidosis, which can cause pain when the kidneys can't flush them out of the body fast enough, and acids are stored in your tissues. Red meat also contains saturated fat. While you need some saturated fat, an abundance can cause health problems. Eating lean red meat twice weekly should be enough to meet your nutritional requirements.

• Drink enough pure water every day. Don't become dehydrated. Not enough water in the body can cause pain and stiffness in joints and cause headaches and pain.

• Include the following foods in your diet: Raspberries, strawberries, cranberries, apples, tart cherries, blueberries, pumpkin seeds, ground flax seeds, walnuts, leafy and cruciferous greens, onions, garlic, white meat, fish or fish oil supplements, hemp oil, ginger, turmeric, and parsley in your diet.

• If you have arthritis or osteoporosis, eat pecans, blueberries, cherries, spinach, and other greens, such as kale, walnuts, organic yogurt, and green tea. These foods inhibit inflammation by neutralizing the acid-like activity that causes inflammation.

• Add calcium (with at least 2/3 the amount of magnesium) or seaweed to your diet.  

• Glucosamine supplements may also be helpful by helping to prevent Leaky Gut.

Holistic Alternatives for Severe Tension Headache & Migraine

• Take riboflavin (400 mg daily), but ask your doctor first.

• Have your blood pressure checked. Blood pressure changes can cause an instant headache in some individuals. Drug stores usually have a blood pressure monitor you can freely use to check your blood pressure.

• Magnesium (500-1000 mg daily) or eat more chickpeas (garbanzo beans). They contain high amounts of magnesium, which relaxes tight, painful muscles, and tryptophan, the amino acid that soothes anxiety. They also contain Molybdenum, a mineral that helps cleanse the body of headache-causing sulfites. Seaweed is also another excellent source of magnesium andcalcium.

• The herb feverfew is the go-to herb for headaches in the herbal world. However, it does have its side effects, so do your research. Willow bark is also helpful. Again, do your research. 

• An herbal steam using crushed coriander seeds may help to relieve a migraine. Add 1/2 teaspoon of ground seeds to 3 cups of water and simmer for 5 minutes. Pour in a basin and lean over the basin with a towel draped over your head and shoulders like a tent covering the basin. You can also chew the seeds instead or drink the solution as tea. If you choose the tea version, strain before serving and add raw honey to taste.

Holistic Alternatives for TMS & MPS

• Eat enough protein every day, at least 6-7 ounces. Your body can't repair muscles without it. If you are a vegetarian, take a full-range amino acid supplement.
• Take magnesium, along with calcium and vitamin D3, every day. A lack of minerals alone can cause severe muscle aches.
• Vitamin B-12 and B-6 work synergistically to repair and protect nerve sheaths.
• Co-Q-10 (ubiquinol) helps to produce cellular energy and support muscle recovery.
• Pycnogenol, another antioxidant, often helps to reduce pain.
• By eating natural foods, you will increase energy in your cells. Increasing oxygen reduces pain and can help relieve painful symptoms of Tension Myositis Syndrome and Myofascial Pain Syndrome.

Book References

• Why We Hurt? Your Self-Care Guide for Backaches, Headaches, Shoulder Pain & Arthritis by Greg Fors, MD, 2007.
• Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual by S. Travell & D. Simon
• A Pain-Free Life: The 6 Week Cure for Chronic Pain: Without Surgery or Drugsby Scott Brady, MD, and William Proctor.
• The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook – Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Reliefby Clair Davies is an illustrated step-by-step guide that reveals where trigger points are and how to ease them.
• The Divided Mind and The Mind/Body Prescription, by John E. Sarno, MD.

NOTE: Be sure to see your doctor if you have increasing or ongoing pain, pain that disturbs your sleep regularly, sudden dizziness, brownouts (nearly passing out) or fainting, primarily upon standing up or gazing upwards, fever, unexplained weight loss associated with your pain experience, signs of inflammation, such as redness, warmth to the touch, infection or shooting pain in the neck or numbness. There are tests your doctor can run (MRI, CT, X-rays, lab tests, etc.) to rule out a mechanical problem.