explain
pain
section
5
page
96
H
ealth professionals havemodels or frameworks on
which they base their work. We believe that an
understanding of thesemodels could help you, the person
in pain. Thesemodels can give you platforms to understand
pain, identify the threats that contribute to, ignite, or
maintain your pain and help you plan for the road to
recovery. They can help youmake sense of some of the
advice you have been given.
‘Orchestras and onions’
We would like to take you through the unusual blend of
orchestras and onions. Orchestras first.
The orchestramodel (virtual body, neuromatrix, neurotag)
is themajormodel onwhich this book is based. It draws
frommany areas of pain science knowledge including brain
imaging, cellular biology and immunology. It considers that
pain results from a combination of processes in tissues and
the processing of dangermessages. This processing is
carried out inmany parts of the nervous system and the
brain in particular can change to represent what it ‘decides’
is best to help you cope.
Themodel is powerful as it recognises that various ignition
cues (eg. fear, memories, damaged tissues, the wrong
information, various circumstances) can be a part of the
pain experience. It is amodel that provides an
understanding of the biological bases of pain and
acknowledges that even though the processes are happening
in the brain, theymanifest themselves in very
real, anatomical and biological ways. Thoughts, ideas, fears,
knowledge and emotions are seen as nerve impulses which
have electrochemical consequences in the brain, just as
inputs from damaged tissues have electrochemical
consequences.
The orchestramodel blends beautifully with the onion skin
model. Bear with us as we link your pain to a vegetable!
Thismodel comes from psychology, was around before the
orchestramodel and it can really power that model up. We
teach it to all our students.
Check out the onion cut inhalf and note the rings. The rings
are away to tag all the factors that can contribute to a pain
experience at any one time.
eg.149,150
Each ring represents a
group of factors. Pain experiences usually involve inputs from
all rings of the onion. At the right time and place, these
factors cankick off the ignitionnodes in the brain and cause
the orchestra to play the pain tune.
Models of engagement
Think like amodern health professional
