Why a High Pain Tolerance Actually Makes You Suffer More Pain

Guest Writer: Julia Niwinski, PT, DPT, Owner of Ascension Physio.

Dr. Julia Niwinski is new to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is busy making a name for herself while growing her PT business Ascension Physio. Her office and treatment space are warm and welcoming.  

A significant part of healing is physical. Physiotherapy is an area that should be considered when pain isn't being resolved. Ignoring pain or "toughing it out" isn't a great choice, it actually leads to further damage. I hope you enjoy her post here.

Experienced in Functional Manual Therapy, Julia’s skill set allows her to excel in treating the whole body and patients of all ages who may suffer from joint pain including TMJ, foot/ankle issues, vestibular dysfunction, post-op recovery, and complex chronic pain. She is also a Women’s Health Therapist experienced in pelvic floor rehabilitation and can help women with a variety of pelvic health issues as well as pre- and postpartum care.

I was so excited Julia extended knowledge, education, information, and value to help you know where to start to pick the best solution for you. Pain intensity is not a reliable indicator of the level of tissue damage, and pushing through pain for months, or even years = more damage and eventually arthritis. There is a whole lot of truth in these statements. One thing I have learned over a lifetime of problems with my legs and feet is not to wait to see if the pain will go away on its own. I hope this information provides serious foot for thought.

Why Your High Pain Tolerance Is Actually Making You Suffer More Pain?

A few people will sheepishly admit to having a low pain tolerance, but many will boast about their toughened ability to grit through copious pain. Societally, it’s certainly perceived as more favorable to have a high pain tolerance, but is the perceived clout worth willfully ignoring the SOS signals your body is sending you?

Your pain tolerance is too high if you’re choosing daily pain of any intensity over finding a solution.

Success stories and miracle cures don’t happen to a special class of people; that could be you.

Ignoring pain until it becomes excruciating will create a desperate scenario with the goal of rapidly eliminating the experience of pain by any means possible rather than decoding the underlying message. Focusing only on eliminating the pain experience looks like numbing with ice or creams, masking with medications, and now, even destroying the nerves that dare transmit information between the brain and the body with radiofrequency ablation. You can also get surgeries that remove the body parts supposedly punishing you (anything that ends in -ectomy, eg. discectomy – NOTE: hospitals receive higher reimbursement from insurance companies for removing body parts rather than repairing them), but if a baby cries, do you get rid of the baby?

A little disclaimer is necessary here: some people do get better with a little ice, some people use medications to get through the exercises that make them better, and some people do need reparative surgery. In the case of extreme peripheral sensitization of the nervous system, radiofrequency ablation could even be helpful as well.

The trick is in not jumping over the underlying cause and going too far down the rabbit hole of for-profit solutions when the right simpler/cheaper option with fewer side effects would have done the trick.

Hopefully, you’re now wondering how you can go about de-coding your pain to pick the best solution for you.

Endeavoring to figure out not just WHICH tissues/diagnosis is sending out the SOS but WHY is a good mindset to start with. Especially in the case of knees, unless you’ve sustained a direct blow to the knee or some other acute injury, you should be suspicious that the WHY behind your knee pain is actually because of a dysfunction somewhere else. NOTE: arthritis is not a “why”, it is still just an accumulated symptom due to a larger problem (there’s no such thing as getting spontaneous knee arthritis on your 60th birthday).

If you don’t want to nerd-out on how a painless hip dysfunction could be causing knee pain and arthritis, you can skip to the next paragraph. Your hip is the biggest joint in your body, the joint you’re sitting on all day, and the transition point in standing where the weight coming down from your upper body meets the force coming up from the ground (if the ground wasn’t pushing up at you, you would go through it like quicksand). Your knee is sandwiched right in the middle of your hip and your foot on the floor. When everything is working efficiently, your knee simply transmits forces from your foot to your hip and your hip to your foot. A dysfunctional (not necessarily painful but weak, tight, or both) hip alters the alignment and distribution of force through the knee to bias one side of the joint. When a portion of the knee joint is continuously bottlenecking some of the forces that should just be passing through, part of your knee may eventually suffer damage due to sustained abnormal force load. Before any damage starts to occur (this could even take months), you may just feel some odd pressure or the slightest ache in your knee. Once damage starts to occur, your brain will signal something is really wrong in the form of pain. Simply numbing or masking the area and focusing all treatment on just the knee will not change the force distribution problem that started it all, and thus the pain will persist. Therefore, pushing through gradual knee pain for months, or even years = more damage and eventually arthritis.

Another little disclaimer: pain intensity is not a reliable indicator of the level of tissue damage. You can step on a Lego (incredibly painful) but look to see your skin hasn’t even broken. Likewise, you may notice a bruise and have no idea when or how you got it. The context surrounding your pain as well as the relative risk of injury will modulate your experience of pain. “No pain, no gain” only refers to pushing through your muscles burning during a good workout. Never push through pain when you don’t know the true underlying cause.

Pain doesn’t have to be something you live with for the rest of your life. Instead of telling people about your high pain tolerance, you could be living your life to the fullest. Instead of being constantly distracted by nagging stabbing/throbbing/burning, you could be forgetting what it even felt like to have pain.

To learn more about the difference between pain tolerance and pain threshold and how having a high pain tolerance lowers your pain threshold to result in more pain, listen to the Unlocking the Power of Movement episode of the Happiness On Tap podcast.

If you’re ready to uncover the root of your pain and banish it for good, book a session with Dr. Julia Niwinski, PT, DPT, and experience how changing the way you move can change your life.

Make sure you check out her website   Home - Ascension Physio and grab her amazing FREE E-Books like Naturally Relieve Your Back Pain with 5 Simple Exercises. This e-book covers 3 mechanisms behind lower back pain, 2 big reasons people develop back pain (the true root of the problem), and 5 simple exercises to get you started controlling your pain.