Pain Relief From External Factors

Getting pain relief from external factors is simple and can be achieved in 2 steps:

1. Manage external factors

2. Muscle balancing

External factors like equipment (can include training gears like footwear, garments worn, even headgear and training tools like barbell and machines) can cause restrictions in the body's movement, inhibition of muscles and thus compensations.

They can also include surroundings related to the environment. The climate (temperature), air pressure, air pollution and other factors like humidity can cause discomfort, some includes breathing difficulties and restricted diaphragms, leading to compensations.

Apart from equipment and surroundings, external factors can also include the physical setup revolving around the workplace desk, lifting equipment, racking and unracking of weights in lifting or even other things like getting in and out of a car. If these physical setups are awkward, often time, the result would be awkward movements of joints and muscles, leading to pain.

For external factors related to equipment, choose footwear with the correct size. A pair of shoes should be big enough and leave one to two fingers spacing at the toes end of the shoes when the heel is placed all the way back to allow room for feet to expand. This pair of shoes should ideally have flexible soles that are not so thick to allow feet to mobilize while walking in it. Barefoot feel shoes are excellent choices to fulfill the criteria of flexible and thin soles.

Garments, including top, pants and even socks, should be loose fitting instead of tight fitting or even worse, have high compression properties. Tight fitting garments, especially compression wear, restricts lymph flow upon prolonged wear, leading to pain and compensations.

Head wear that is too small and inappropriately shaped applies a constant force in the cranial nerves, leading to headaches and neck aches, thus pain and compensations. To avoid that, choose head wear with appropriate sizes and shapes.

Pain induced by environment factors can be very tricky to handle as some of these are beyond our control.

For climate, extreme conditions cause discomfort and neuro-receptors at the skin to not operate optimally. Extreme cold also results in muscles being stiff, leading to compensatory movement. Extreme warm can obstruct sleep at night, leading to restlessness and thus poor recovery from daily stress. Extreme dryness or dampness can result in poor respiration. When facing such situations, the key is to manage the indoor conditions to provide a safe space for the human body.

For air pressure, higher altitudes where air pressure is lower results in a lack of air availability and a general feeling of suffocation. If you find yourself being in such situations, try to optimize breathing to optimize the amount of air taken in. Lower altitudes where air pressure is higher results in too much air availability, resulting in discomfort from a raise in lungs and diaphragm pressure.

Pollution can come in different forms, including air, noise, light and radiation.

For air pollution, poor air quality results in poor breathing due to particles in the air blocking the airways, which can be minimized through nose breathing to allow better filtration.

For noise pollution, loud industrial noises caused by either construction or renovation works contributes to irritation, poor mental focus and daily stress. If noise pollution is prominent at night time, sleep quality can also be affected, which using ear plugs can be helpful to minimize the impact.

For light pollution, exposure to blue light from electronics, like laptops and mobiles, and LED lights leads to chronic over-stimulation of the retinas, leading to increase in daily stress and reduced melatonin production in the case of exposure from evening hours onward, which reduces sleep quality, contributing to even more chronic stress. The use of red tinted sunglasses can be used to block out blue light when work needs to be done on electronics and in environments illuminated by bright LED lights. The use of eye masks can be used to block out light during sleep hours.

For radioactive pollution, exposure to wireless radiation from the use of Wi-Fi electronics leads to more daily stress as well as sleep interference. Having mobiles and other portable electronics in the pockets or near the body makes the exposure worse. All these can be minimized by switching these devices to airplane mode when internet connection is not needed, especially for mobile phones whereby their airplane modes can be turned off at regular time intervals to check for messages but kept at airplane mode while on the go. Anti-radiation cards that shields people from Wi-Fi are excellent tools to protect self from not just our personal electronics but those of others.

Physical setup can include the work space, lifting equipment and getting into or out of something.

Work space can include adjustments in the chair and table height, as well as the screen and keyboard angles.

Lifting equipment can include the notches of squats/bench racks and machines, as well as whether the equipment are in order.

Getting in or out of something can be in the context of different scenarios, like work space, vehicles and exercises (unracking of barbells for a bench press or getting out of a dip upon completing the repetitions).

To minimize physical pain from physical setup related external factors, simply make the necessary adjustments to optimize physical comfort.

Having those external factors makes a body vulnerable to pain and muscle imbalances due to the constant compensations from unease and awkwardness. This makes muscle balancing an important step in overcoming pain for someone with such issues.

Compensations result in muscles being selectively over- or under- activated. By stretching, massaging, activating and applying a manual therapy method involving body receptor adjustment on the relevant muscles, muscle imbalances can be managed.

Personally, I used to wear compression tights all day long. Back then, I used to experience a lot of hips compensations. This was made worse when I allowed myself to slouch. I also used to rely on stimulating the neuro-lymphatic reflex points to reactivate key muscles from time to time, but until I changed my dressing habit, I continued to experience much pain.

Pain and compensations can lead to other issues that reinforce each other, leading to a vicious cycle shown in the above photo. Some more other possible complications include faulty movement patterns, chronic stress, poor breathing patterns and unresolved emotions.

Faulty movement patterns are instilled by the same specific compensation patterns from the respective structural issues. Personally, I tend to have faulty movement patterns in any lower limb activities, ranging from walking to lower body weight training movements. Sometimes, even upper body movements can get affected too due to a series of compensations sent up through the spine. This is also the same reason why core stability works are crucial in pain relief from structural issues.

Chronic stress occurs from repetitive faulty movement patterns, affecting the non-physical aspects of health too. When I am on my feet for prolonged periods, I am more easily tired and moody.

Poor breathing patterns occur naturally with rising chronic stress. I find myself breathing heavily during prolonged periods of standing even in the absence of exerting myself, especially when I reached the point of being moody.

Unresolved emotions can occur from going through traumatic experiences. Due to my big toe being less mobile from a torn tendon, hard landing on my right foot often times lead to pain due to less force absorption. There were several occasions when I landed feeling a jolt up my right foot radiating up my hip. These make me overly conscious and cautious of every step I take, especially stepping down steeply. It took me sometime to learn to be cautious enough to move around without landing too hard to avoid pain but not to the point of causing more compensations.

Many people face challenges in daily life from external factors leading to pain. While some are clearly beyond human action to remove, there are actionable steps to take to minimize the effects of these factors to allow us to experience more ease.

I do work closely with individuals to holistically relief chronic and recurring pain by more than just managing structural issues, as illustrated in my other article "Permanent Relief From Recurring Pain".

Addressing muscle imbalances are illustrated in my other article "A Deeper Look Into Muscle Imbalances".

Contact me for more information if you are looking to address muscle imbalances or holistically overcome ongoing pain!