Your horse has pain, you treated it but notice that your horse isn't 100% better? Why? Because of the cycle of pain.
Your horse has pain, you treated it but notice that your horse isn't 100% better? Why? Because of the cycle of pain.
What is the cycle of pain?
The cycle of pain is a continuous loop of negative factors that occur when an injury happens.
Lets walk through all the steps so we can understand what is happening in the body.
Pain
This is when trauma occurs to an area and is the beginning of the pain cycle. Tripping, falling, banging, etc.
Guarding
Once the pain starts our body starts to guard the injured area through muscle spasms and restricting movement to prevent further damage the site. This is the body's natural "splint" or "cast".
Inflammation
Inflammation is the body's way of telling the immune system that there is an injury and to send troops over to help heal and repair the damage. It does not always require outside treatment.
Restrictive Movement
This is similar to guarding, however too much guarding can lead to restrictive movement. This restriction in movement can continue after the damage has been repaired.
Compensation
Since the body has adapted to guarding and not using that area, another area has to take the burden and do twice the work. The horse doesn't just decide to walk on 3 legs if one is injured. The other three legs take on that weight.
Just like any other cycle, the pain cycle can be broken.
Now that we discussed the cycle of pain lets talk about how we can break that cycle. The initial cause of the cycle is pain which we can't always prevent in the first place, but we can target residual pain.
Using heat or ice is going to depend on the situation. Heat to increase blood flow and ice to reduce blood flow where there is inflammation.
Passive therapy such as massage, shockwave, acupuncture can all have a positive effect on the body and help limit pain.
Active techniques are really going to give us the most "bang for our buck." We have temporarily eliminated pain with steps 1 & 2, now we have to put the body through the motions to help restore function to the body. This can be something as simple as hand walking or stretching exercises.
After all 3 steps are complete, we should start seeing a break in the pain cycle. Pain has decreased, there is less muscle guarding, an increase in range of motion and an increase in strength.