By definition, pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential damage to a structure in the body. (International Association for the Study of Pain). Pain is the brain’s protective mechanism to detect threats to the body and is NORMAL!

The majority of the people we treat as physical therapists are experiencing some form of pain, including acute after recent injury, subacute, or post-operative. This kind of pain is adaptive and should follow typical timelines of healing/recovery with several approaches to treat including modalities, exercises, manual treatments and education. Easy right? Well, it can be for some but unfortunately, as many people know firsthand, it is not always that easy.