Drs. Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall developed a theory about back pain in the 1960s. Research on their theory is being given new life due to the amazing medical research tools available today. The theory is called the Gate Control Theory of Pain. It’s an interesting theory that’s being studied closer as doctors learn to appreciate the close relationship between pain and the brain.
Basically this theory says that there are pain gates along the spinal cord. When your brain sends a message to a nerve telling it to hurt, the open pain gate allows more pain through. This theory says your thoughts and emotions can affect the opening and closing of the pain gate. If this is true that means you can control some of your pain by controlling your thoughts. What a great idea! It’s much better to reduce your pain through mind control than through medication. But medication is used to relax the mind when stress is causing the pain gate to stay open. There’s a lot more research going on, but the pain gate theory makes a lot of sense.
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