Chronic Pain

click to enlarge images

In these drawings, red signifies the location of the ache. The crosses are the the tense muscle areas (triggerpoints). These are painful at touch. By releasing these tense muscle areas (Triggerpoint Treatment) , the ache stops.

This is only an example of a few muscles. You have many more muscles like that.

The Physical Sense team has many years of experience in dealing with Chronic pain.

We treat conditions such as persistent aches in neck, back, hips, shoulders, knees, feet and also OOS , headaches, migraines and TMJ.

We use triggerpoint treatment (a massage techniques) to relax and release your muscles. This makes your muscles less painful, longer and stronger.

We use exercise programs to both lengthen and strengthen your muscles and to help you gain a better posture.

Once we assess how you cope with your condition we are able to educate and advice you in relation to the management of your condition.

Many Christchurch GPs and several specialists (pain management, rheumatologists, orthopedic surgeons and musculoskeletal specialists) refer us their patients because of our great results

Our team is looking forward to helping you.

What is Chronic Pain?

Chronic pain has several different meanings in medicine. Traditionally, the distinction between acute and chronic pain has relied upon an arbitrary interval of time from onset; the two most commonly used markers being 3 months and 6 months since the initiation of pain

Others apply acute to pain that lasts less than 30 days, chronic to pain of more than six months duration, and subacute to pain that lasts from one to six months.

A popular alternative definition of chronic pain, involving no arbitrarily fixed durations is “pain that extends beyond the expected period of healing”

Chronic pain may cause other symptoms or conditions, including depression and anxiety. It may also contribute to decreased physical activity given the apprehension of exacerbating pain. Very little work has been done on the cognitive effects of chronic pain, with most of the publications focussing on the effects of cognition on pain but only 5% examining the effects of pain on cognition.