The nervous system is more sensitive in some people and less sensitive in others. Chronic pain may be more common after a major injury. Genetics may be another reason. Unfortunately, you have little control over these things.
What you do have control over is how your mood, behaviour, and activity affects your pain. Learning how these factors influence pain will help you understand what makes your pain worse and what makes it better.
Imagine…
The human body as a house and chronic pain as a smoke alarm that goes off when there is no fire. You notice that using the oven without turning the kitchen fan on makes the alarm go off. The alarm also goes off when the house is warmer than 23⁰C. Noticing what turns the alarm on can help you avoid unnecessary alarms. You can quiet the alarm by turning on the fan when using the oven and cooling the house below 23⁰C. Like a smoke alarm that easily reacts, knowing how your mood, behaviours, and activity levels affects pain can help you find healthy living strategies to reduce your pain.
What is happening in the body?
Psychological, behavioural, and activity factors such as stress, fatigue, low mood, inactivity or over activity, sleeping difficulties, and smoking make your nervous system more sensitive. They increase the baseline electrical activity in the nerves. This means it takes less stimulation for the nerve to reach the “alarm threshold” and for danger signals to travel to the brain.
