Cantissimo Senior Living Blog

Do you take care of your body as well as you maintain your car? If your vehicle is vibrating or rattling when you drive over 60 miles per hour, what would you do?

To fix the problem, are you going to give the car a wash and polish? No.

Would you give it higher leaded gasoline?  Of course not!

The right answer? Of course, you would immediately take the vehicle to a qualified mechanic and get to the root of the problem to resolve it as quickly as possible. After all, you don't want to get stranded on the highway the next time you leave home!

Now, what if you have back pain when you get out of bed in the morning? Or after you exercise?

Isn’t it interesting how we incorrectly and inappropriately phrase things, leading us to believe that they are true? Have you ever said, (or heard someone say), “my back went out”? As if your back just decided one day to go rogue and go into spasm, or stop supporting you. Hmm…really?

The truth is that, for this to happen, you may have been mistreating your back muscles for some time. It was likely not consciously or intentionally, but unknowingly.

It may be hard to believe, but some of the activities that you love may actually be causing you pain.

The Learning Process

To understand pain, it is essential to understand the learning process of the brain. When we learn a new thing, we naturally break the process down step by step. We start slowly and use the cortex of our brain to pay attention to the activity we are learning. Our brain learns by sensing and feeling and repetition. As we continue to refine and adapt, the movement graduates from being unfamiliar and unnatural to familiar and natural. This is the process of habituation. This is how we learn and develop all life skills.