Chronic Pain and the Boom and Bust Cycle

Boom and Bust Cycle

People with pain often overdo activity when they feel ok and stop when they reach their pain threshold.

When a person reaches their pain threshold they need to rest for a period of time (hours, afternoon, days, weeks).

A person then feels better. They overdo their activities again in an attempt to catch up on chores/activities that feel by the wayside when they were resting.

They then reach their pain threshold again.

This time a person may need to rest for longer. Every time we experience more pain and need to rest this makes it more tempting to avoid engaging in activities that seem to result in more pain. This inactive in turn results in de-conditioning of the body.

This time when a person feel ok and overdoes it, their pain threshold is now lower, and they need longer to recover as they are not physically fit.

Pacing

This is known as the boom and bust cycle. In order to overcome this you need to take an activity (e.g. walking) and get a baseline of how long you can walk each day before pain hits for a week. Then you need to average this number and times it by 80%. This becomes how much activities you need to do on a daily basis so that you’re in control of your pain, not the other way around. Of course, you will still have pain flare ups at time that are out of your control, but this is one strategy to manage pain.

Book: Manage Your Pain by Michael Nicholas, Allan Molloy, Lois Tonkin and Lee Beeston

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash