Blog
Nov 21
No Pain No Gain?
Ok, just for s***s and giggles I’m going quantify the idea of pain by placing it on a 1-10 scale often used by medical professionals. You know this scale if you’ve ever been admitted to the ER for some kind of trauma that probably became unbearable in the middle of the night such as a broken bone, kidney stones, ankle sprain, etc. The triage nurse will often ask: “How would you rate your discomfort from a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst?” And, because you are in the ER, you want to scream; ‘It’s an 11 or I wouldn’t be here!”, but instead you tell the nurse it’s probably a 5. (Now, if you’re a woman you probably said 2-3 because you know that menstrual cramps and child birth have prepared you for just about anything physically painful in life.) This 1-10 pain scale is highly subjective. For instance, my 8 might be your 3 and vice versa. So how are we supposed to know what is a therapeutic threshold for pain when receiving deep tissue bodywork? Stay tuned. In the next blog post we’ll take a look at other practices that embrace strong sensation or even look towards increasing a person’s tolerance to pain for some answers.