Understanding Pain: Why It Hurts and Where It Really Begins
Most people come into my office pointing to where it hurts. "It's right here." And they're absolutely right. That's where they feel the pain. But after treating thousands of patients over more than 35 years, I've seen one pattern repeat itself again and again. The place you feel pain is often not the place where the problem actually began.
That's because pain is usually the end of the story, not the beginning.
Pain is the smoke.
My job is to find the fire.
Pain Is a Signal, Not the Whole Story
When something hurts, it's tempting to treat that spot and call it done. Rub the sore muscle, adjust the painful joint, send you on your way. Sometimes that helps for a little while. But if the thing that caused the pain is still there, it comes back, often in the same place, sometimes in a new one.
By the time you feel pain, your body has usually been compensating for weeks, months, or even years. The pain is simply the moment your body ran out of ways to work around the problem.
Your Body Works as a System
Here's the idea that shapes everything I do. The body isn't a collection of separate parts. It's one connected system. When one area stops moving well, everything around it has to pick up the slack.
Take your low back. Your pelvis sits in the middle like a flag on a rope, pulled from below by your
hamstrings and from above by your lower back muscles. The hamstrings are far larger and stronger, so when they get tight, they win. Your smaller back muscles end up under constant strain just trying to hold the line, and that's what you feel as low back pain. But in this example, the hamstrings were driving the
problem, not the low back itself.
The Tug-of-War Behind Low Back Pain
Your pelvis is the flag in the middle of the rope
Hamstrings win the pull
Low back strains just holding the line
The back feels the pain, but the hamstrings are usually driving the problem.
The thing happens all over the body. A stiff ankle changes how the knee works. A restricted
shoulder changes how the neck moves. Find the part that stopped moving the way it was designed to, and you often uncover one of the underlying contributors to the pain.
How the Body Borrows Movement
Our body is incredibly adaptable. If one joint loses motion, another joint will often move more than it
should to keep you functioning. That's what I mean by borrowing movement.
It keeps you going for a while. You may not even notice. But the joint doing the extra work was never
designed to carry that load, and over time, the borrowed movement starts wearing something else out.
Eventually that shows up as pain, often somewhere entirely different from where the trouble started. I see it constantly here in Sacramento. Runners on the American River Parkway nursing a tight IT band. Weekend golfers whose low back pays the price for a hip that stopped rotating properly. Someone who spent Saturday gardening in their Arden-Arcade backyard and can't figure out why their hip is screaming on Monday.
Where Pain Comes From
Where Pain Comes From
Most pain builds up quietly from a handful of everyday sources
Positions Held Too Long
Hunched at a computer for hours, or sleeping in a way that shortens a muscle all night.
Movements We Repeat
The same swing, keyboard, or lifting motion, done thousands of times.
Old Injuries
Scar tissue doesn't move like healthy tissue, quietly changing how an area works for years.
New Demands
A new workout or big project added on top of a system that's already compensating.
When these stack up, the body borrows more and more movement from areas that were never meant to carry the load. That borrowing becomes strain, and strain eventually becomes pain.
Two Ways Pain Begins, and Why They Often Overlap
Sometimes pain starts with a single, obvious event. You lift something the wrong way, take a fall, or get
hit in a collision, and the tissue is genuinely injured right then. That kind of injury often needs prompt attention to calm things down and support proper healing.
Other times it builds up so gradually you never notice it happening. Imagine scanning groceries eight
hours a day. One scan doesn't hurt you. Neither do ten. But after thousands, day after day, month after
month, your body starts paying the price.
And here's the part that surprises people most. Very often, those two stories are actually one. Someone
spends years quietly building up tension in their low back. Then one ordinary morning they bend over to pick up a pencil, and wham, something gives.
Two Ways Pain Begins
And why they often turn out to be the same story
A Single Event
A fall, a bad lift, a collision. The tissue is genuinely injured right then and needs prompt attention.
A Gradual Buildup
Thousands of small repetitions. No single moment. The system quietly overloads over months.
The pencil wasn't the cause.
It was simply the last straw.
Whichever way your pain began, it usually traces back to the same thing: a body that was no longer moving and sharing load the way it should. And even a true one-time injury rarely stays a one-time problem, because as it heals, scar tissue stiffens the area, the surrounding muscles compensate, and a single event quietly becomes an ongoing pattern.
Why the Same Problem Shows Up in Different Places
This is why two people with the same underlying issue can feel it in completely different spots. The body
breaks down wherever it's least able to handle the extra load.
In the neck and head, as headaches, tension, or stiffness. In the low back, as aching, sciatica, or pain when bending. In the shoulder, hip, or knee, as a joint that keeps flaring up. In the elbow or wrist, as tennis elbow, tendonitis, or repetitive strain from work. In the foot, as plantar fasciitis. In the jaw, as TMJ tension and pain. In athletes, as a strain that keeps returning mid-season.
Different symptoms. Different locations. Same underlying story: a system that's no longer distributing load the way it should.
What Real Recovery Takes
If pain were purely local, care would be simple. Treat the spot, done. But because pain is usually the result of a pattern, lasting relief means correcting the pattern, not just quieting the symptom. In practice,
care follows a consistent order.
t's a lot like a rusty hinge. You can force the door open, but until the hinge itself moves freely again, it
keeps binding in the same spot. Get the whole system moving properly, and the pain has no reason to keep coming back.
Why I Treat in This Order
Most chiropractic visits are just an adjustment. Mine usually aren't. There's a reason I don't typically
start with one.
A muscle can't fully relax while it's actively working. When muscles are tight, overactive, or guarding an
injured area, they're constantly pulling on the joints they're attached to. Trying to restore normal movement while those muscles are still fighting you is like trying to straighten a crooked tent pole while the guy wires are still pulling it sideways.
That's why I often begin with moist heat, soft tissue work, and stretching. The goal is to help those muscles relax first. Once they're no longer pulling as hard, the joint can move more naturally, the adjustment is often more comfortable, and the correction is more likely to last.
It comes down to something I tell patients all the time. Bones don't move themselves. Muscles move bones. If the muscles around a joint are tight and pulling unevenly, they keep placing abnormal forces on that joint, which is exactly why I focus on the muscles before and after the adjustment, not just the joint itself.
The visit doesn't end there either. I usually prescribe home care that works in two directions. Some exercises loosen muscles that have become tight and overactive. Others strengthen muscles that have become weak or stopped doing their share of the work. Together, they help support the correction and reduce the chance of the same pattern returning.
Why Does the Pain Keep Coming Back?
This is the question I hear most often. Someone gets adjusted, feels great for a day or two, and then the
pain creeps right back.
Imagine four people pulling a wagon together. If one person suddenly pulls much harder while another barely pulls at all, the wagon won't travel straight, no matter how many times you point it in the right
direction.
Your body works the same way. An adjustment can restore motion to a joint, but if the muscles around it are still pulling unevenly, those forces gradually drag the body back toward the same old pattern. That's why I don't just focus on the adjustment itself. I work to change the forces acting on the joint, so the correction actually has a chance to hold.
Why This Approach Matters
Most persistent pain isn't a sign that something suddenly broke. It's a sign that something has been
compensating for too long without anyone correcting it.
That distinction is everything. It's the difference between chasing symptoms around your body for years and actually addressing why they keep showing up. It's why I spend time on the muscles and not just the joints, why I look at how you move and not just where you hurt, and why I'd rather understand the whole picture than rush you through a quick adjustment.
I don't believe your body is randomly falling apart. I believe there's a reason it's asking for help. Finding
that reason is where real recovery begins.
How This Guides Every Condition We Treat
Whether it shows up as a headache, low back pain, sciatica, a sports injury, or the wear of a physical job, the process is the same. I look at how your body is moving as a whole, find where the load is going
wrong, and work in sequence to correct it: calm the tissue, restore the motion, rebuild the stability.
Every condition we treat is really a different expression of the same question: how is your body distributing load, and where has that started to break down?
Learn more about how this approach applies to your situation:
Wellness Spa of Arden • Serving Sacramento Since 1993
Move Better. Recover Better. Function Better.
Pain Isn't the Enemy
Pain isn't the enemy. It's your body's way of telling you something has changed.
The goal isn't simply to make the pain disappear. It's to understand why it showed up in the first place, and restore the way your body was meant to move. That's how you stop chasing symptoms. That's how you create lasting change.
Whether your pain has been bothering you for two weeks or twenty years, understanding why it's happening is the first step. If you're ready to stop chasing symptoms and start addressing the underlying problem, I'd love to help. As a Sacramento chiropractor with more than three decades of experience, I'd be glad to take a look.
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Wellness Spa of Arden helps patients throughout Sacramento, Arden-Arcade, Carmichael, Fair Oaks, Folsom, El Dorado Hills, and surrounding communities understand their pain and move, recover, and feel better.