What is the most common misconception about musculoskeletal pain?

Well, you might be excited to hear this one. The most common education I give to my patients about pain is that the presence of pain does NOT always indicate tissue damage. Musculoskeletal (muscle, bone, tendon, ligament, etc.) pain can stem from many causes.

A lot of what physical therapists see daily is overused, imbalanced, or just under conditioned/underdeveloped muscle. For example, a common occurrence in the spring is the development of lower back pain. A patient may come in who is an active individual but has done a lot of gardening, reorganizing, and cleaning around their house in preparation for the new season. The onslaught of low back pain may be a surprise, but sometimes it is as simple as this: your back wasn’t ready or trained to perform the volume or amount of work you just asked it to do! This also means immediately jumping to specific diagnoses and getting scans may be unnecessary.

We all want to know EXACTLY what is going on, so we can hope to avoid it in the future, so we might go through a whole gamut of testing.  But, there’s a chance that testing and scans show nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, even in the presence of pain. The best course of action is to take a break from some of the heavier activities you’ve been doing and allow your body to recover. When symptoms subside, slowly work your way back into your normal activity routines. If this is where you get stuck and you aren’t sure where to go from there, see a physical therapist!

Getting people back to movement and normal daily routines is our job.

 

Kimberly Rea, PTA, is a physical therapist assistant at Frederick Health Urbana Outpatient Clinic treating and educating the adult orthopedic population.  She specializes in orthopedics, spine disorders, post-surgical rehab, and sports rehab.