Scars & Traumas
Their Hidden Influence on Chronic Pain, Health & Disease
By napa
Kelly Armstrong,
OTRL, with
MPP-MPS
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icon evolves
the time
Chronic pain affects millions of people every
year and the effects of pain result in tremendous health care
costs, in terms of rehabilitation and lost worker productivity,
plus the emotional and financial burden it places on patients and
their families.
According to a recent Institute of Medicine Report: Reliev-
ing Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention,
Care, Education, and Research, pain is a significant public health
problem that costs society at least $560-$635 billion annually, an
amount equal to about $2,000 for every living person in the U.S.
Scars and trauma have long been recognized in neural therapy
as a source of chronic pain as a result of Autonomic Nervous Sys-
tem (ANS) (in particular sympathetic nervous system) upregula-
tion. It is theorized that damaged local cells lose their normal
membrane potential, transmitting abnormal electric signals
throughout the rest of the body via the autonomic nervous sys-
tem, acting as physical agonists to sympathetic upregulation
(stress) and pain.
For some time now, chronic pain has been difficult to diag-
nose and treat for many health care professionals. When the
millions of physical scars produced annually throughout North
America are combined with the day-to-day accumulated patient
traumas, the data represents a significant pre-existing pool of
stress and pain patients within the general population. It may
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help to explain the causation of symptoms for millions of chronic
pain sufferers. In addition, the long-term use of opioids are now
approaching epidemic levels in the USA, with few viable solu-
tions for treatment in the foreseeable future.
How do Scars Cause Pain?
1) Scars Upregulate the Sympathetic Nervous System and
produce stress, decreasing vagal tone, leading to muscle
hyper-tonicity.
2) S
cars strain & pull fascia, which connects to all muscles and
organs of the body. One small strain can cause significant
muscle imbalances throughout the body, producing pain
and muscle weakness often far removed from scar or
trauma site.
3) Scars create formation of adhesions inside the body &
muscles. Adhesions reduce muscle performance (shutting
them down) and produce pain.
4) Scars block blood circulation & energetic flows through the
meridian system, producing muscle stagnation.
All the above responses to scar formation, when combined,
lead to chronic pain. The revelation that scars cause chronic pain
is not new. One hundred year old Neural Therapy, an injection
based scars therapy, is based on the theory that physical scars