Physiotherapists in Holland Park treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Allodynia . An Abnormal Pain

Most of the pain we feel is .normal. in terms of being similar to what other people feel in similar situations of injury and damage. We get a standard pain after being injured which is the result of the tissue injury and the changes which automatically occur within the central nervous system in response to the incoming pain barrages. Our pains are proportionally related to the amount of unpleasant input we suffer and we only respond with pain to what we expect would be a painful stimulus. This is referred to as nociceptive pain and is the normal kind we suffer from in the way we expect to suffer in certain cases.

Allodynia is a painful response to a normally non-painful stimulus, such as touching, wind passing over a part of the body or the pressure of the water from a shower. Normally the result of a nerve injury but also occurring in pain syndromes such as fibromyalgia, allodynia is an abnormal pain response due to changes within the central nervous system. A heightened, amplified pain response is generated inside the spinal cord or brain, giving the sufferer a high level of very unpleasant pain in response to a trivial stimulus.

Forward Bending Actions Which Can Injure The Spine

In normal circumstances people bend their lumbar spines by 80-100% of the available movement when they bend over to the floor to pick things up. Adding an awkward movement such as to one side increases the stretch on the facet joint of the other side. This indicates that it is easy to get to the maximum bend limit of the lower spine by doing something easy like reaching down to the feet to put on shoes. Long periods of remaining flexed, such as sitting for a long car journey, forces the ligaments to relax, decreasing the protective muscular mechanisms and increasing the chances of suffering a disc prolapse.

If the muscles get tired by repetitive actions of lifting or bending over then their protective care of the spine is also diminished. In the anatomical examination of spines after death there has been shown to be a 20% incidence of rupture of the ligaments which connect the spines of the individual vertebrae at the back. As these ligaments are fully stretched when the spine is fully bent it is likely that bending injuries due to too much flexion of the spine are very common as people are suddenly forced into bend by an accidental movement.