Hurt Doesn’t Equal Harm - From a Rehab Chiropractor

We often correlate the pain we feel to tissue damage. But this isn’t true for the most part. Sure, if you break your arm or have a traumatic injury then yes, you did a lot of damage and it hurts like hell. But for non-traumatic injuries, the hurt doesn’t equal harm.

One example I like to use is a paper cut. We’ve all gotten a paper cut and we all know that he hurt like a son of a *****.

But when you look at the cut itself, it’s so small and there’s very minimal tissue damage. The same thing can be said for the majority of complaints I see in my office. Just because something hurts like crazy, doesn’t mean you have major tissue damage.

The same thing can also be said of the pain you feel during exercise. Continuing to exercise while having pain or an injury can be confusing and deserves its own blog, however, the same concept applies. Just because you feel pain during exercise doesn’t mean you are causing damage.

Let’s use the paper cut analogy again. Have you ever had a fresh paper cut and then used hand sanitizer?

Yeah, not a good feeling. But did you cause more damage? No. It hurt really bad but you can see that it didn’t cause more damage. The same thing can be said for exercising with pain. You aren’t causing damage, that movement just might be a little more sensitive.

Pain can be confusing and we often think that the hurt we feel is equal to the damage done. For the most part, it’s not. So next time an injury happens and hurts like crazy, stay calm and don’t stress out. And remember, hurt doesn’t equal harm.

If you’re dealing with some pain and want help to understand it and overcome it, then send me an email at resiliencechiro@gmail.com and I’d love to sit down and talk about it with you.

Talk soon,

Dr. Andrew Schneider DC, ATC