Injury or contraction to a muscle, organ, or bone sends a signal through the muscle to the nerve that innervates it and then to your brain. Nerves flow throughout your body into every corner with axoplasmic fluid and tiny blood vessels. That fluid speaks to the muscles and thus the blood and into the CNS or central nervous system. The CNS is the brain and spinal cord.
If you hurt a bone, the pain signal is sent into the muscle next to the bone via the nerve tissue that innervates the muscle. Then the signal travels to the brain. Your bones don’t directly register pain. THERE ARE NO NERVE ENDINGS IN BONES. It feels like your bones hurt because the soft tissue connecting to the bone is responsible for the bones existence! Your bones only deteriorate after you’ve let your muscle and other soft tissue get weak, injured, and atrophied. Bone follows tissue. Bone follows muscle. Bones are the servant of the entire body. They don’t lead anything in the body. The muscles move the body when your mind tells it to and the bones are basically an extension of the muscles. Their main job is to make blood and that is quite an important job.
Even the vertebral foramen which is the space where the nerve branch shoots out of the central spine does not touch the nerve; THE MUSCLE WRAPS AROUND THE NERVE ROOT!
Imagine your spine a second made up of the vertebrae. The muscles next to the spine which criss-cross every which way attach to the bone via the ligament and tendon. That is the case throughout the entire body next to the bone. The soft tissue that attaches to all bone is muscle, ligament, and tendon and that is the focus of treatment for Naprapathic manual therapists because any pathology there is the cause of the problem.
If an organ is troubled or diseased, it also has nerves that run to it from the CNS and muscle surrounding the organ. Thus, any problem with an organ will also send a signal to the muscle next to it and to the CNS.
The muscles and the blood are EVERYTHING when it comes to managing pain and they are utterly ignored in the healthcare industry. Massage doesn’t cut it. Massage therapy only touches the first 2 layers of the skin.
In addition to all of this, the body also contains within itself NATURAL, INTRINSIC pain relievers that rival big pharma when stimulated by a qualified practitioner. Here is an NCBI link from the National Institutes of Health.
Naturally occurring in the blood are beta-endorphins, the Met- and Leu-enkephalins, and the Dynorphins. After I work on you, and endorphin cascade from the brain into your blood is normal. Be careful driving home. The last link talks about intrinsic cannabinoid receptors also in the body. You see, you need the release of muscle tension and movement of the blood far more than you need a hallucinogen.
Deep Tissue Therapy & Reiki Grand Rapids 