KO’d by the pain of being stressed

For more than 30 years ex-professional boxer, Keith Tate of Cleckheaton, has run a boxing gym to motivate kids and get them off the street, while also fostering young children on remand.

However Keith had struggled to deal with all his responsibilities due to severe debilitating pain, despite spending about £700 on treatment.

Keith’s lower back and leg pain developed soon after New Year’s Day last year and suddenly escalated while on the plane flying to Lanzarote on holiday.

While on holiday he was confined to bed for days and spent 700 euros on medical care including three spinal injections and physiotherapy.

On his return he began visiting a chiropractor and was told he would need about 13 appointments, which not surprisingly would then have cost him considerably more.

During a visit by the social worker involved in his fostering work, it was clear he was in a lot of pain. The social worker mentioned that he had himself been in a lot of pain five years previously but after just two sessions with Huddersfield physiotherapist, Georgie Oldfield at her pioneering pain clinic he had not had a problem since.

Georgie developed the SIRPA (Stress Illness Recovery Practitioners Association) programme which aims to help relieve people’s pain by tackling their stress.

“After examining Keith it was clear that his pain had come on gradually with no actual injury,” explains Georgie. “On questioning it became clear that he was under quite a lot of stress, in addition to his ‘normal’ stress of being a foster carer and running his boxing gym, which he does in his own time and for no financial reward.

“Studies now demonstrate that the brain can create pain despite there being no physical injury and this was obviously the cause here. In fact the pain appears to be an adapted form of the automatic ‘fight and flight’ response, which happens unconsciously and automatically as a protection from, in this case, Keith’s anger about his situation overwhelming him.

“Understanding this and then looking at ways to identify and acknowledge what had been going on allowed the underlying cause of the pain to be ‘defused’, therefore resulting in his pain resolving.”

Her diagnosis really hit home to Keith.

“Quite honestly, what Georgie said made sense and as I was driving home and I began to accept it, the pain just began settling down,” said Keith.

“After listening to Georgie’s CD so I could understand it better I was absolutely fine and was back doing all my normal activities within days.”

Georgie comments: “Unfortunately if the underlying cause of Keith’s pain hadn’t been identified and dealt with, he would probably have become one of the millions of people who live with chronic pain.

“The current beliefs, plus fears related to chronic pain and the prognosis, unfortunately have been creating this needless epidemic of chronic pain.

“Stress accounts for far more persistent health conditions than is widely accepted.”

Patients learn to heal themselves

The SIRPA approach to the treatment of chronic pain, which Georgie has been developing over the past few years, is based on the understanding that most chronic pain is actually caused by the central nervous system. Once anything more serious has been ruled out and the cause of their pain is accepted, patients are usually able to recover using an educational and self-empowering approach which doesn’t involve hands-on therapy or counselling.

Georgie Oldfield is a Yorkshire-based physiotheraist and founder of SIRPA Ltd.