When pain goes from acute to chronic, the pain isn’t just in a specific body part any more, the pain messages and signals also become wired in our brains and our nervous systems. Chronic pain creates a constant stress burden and increases what is called our allosteric load, our total body and brain stress burden, and uses up mental and physical resources, energy and can lead to a hyper aroused ‘tired but wired’ nervous system that has trouble relaxing and calming down due to the constant internal threat of pain.

It is possible to treat chronic pain effectively using a holistic approach even if the cause of the pain has no permanent cure.

The Endocannabinoid System & Pain

The endocannabinoid system is a natural brain and body system involved with regulating most major functions including pain regulation. There are ECS receptors in the brain as well as in nerves throughout the body and even in localized joints and tissues. Therapeutics that work on the ECS can interrupts the pain messages through a multitude of different chemical and brain messenger pathways, contributing to an anti-pain effect. ECS differences in chronic pain can change not only how our brain processes pain, but also our emotional and behavioural ‘brain reactions’ to it.

This is part of the chronic pain experience where our brain areas of emotion and mood become involved in the pain response. This is a very real part of chronic pain and ‘thinking positively’ does not work to counter it. Targeting the ECS helps with the secondary symptoms of pain too, such as low mood, anxiety, brainfog and anxiety.

Exercise also activates the analgesic (pain relief) effects of the endocannabinoid system, which is one of the reasons why staying active is so important if you have chronic pain. However, for many patients they are in too much pain or too deconditioned to be able to use exercise in this way, leading to a vicious cycle of no exercise, more weight gain & weakness, leading to more pain and muscle wasting making it harder to exercise/move the body leading to less energy. Treating pain effectively using a holistic approach can help break this cycle.