I’ve been suffering from plantar fasciitis, and I guess having to deal with the pain on my feet on a daily basis increased my pain tolerance, as well as thresholds. However, every person is made up of a unique DNA, and we have different reactions to certain stimuli like pain. There are those people, especially women, who have much lower pain tolerance and threshold.

Pain experts define tolerance to pain as the maximum amount of pain you’re able to tolerate, whereas the pain threshold is the level at which pain can already be felt. The great thing is that there are many alternative forms of pain management nowadays such as massage and Electrostimulation with the use of TENS unit pads like DONECO®.

I’ve talked about TENS and EMS therapies in my previous posts and how both can be effective in relieving pain. There’s actually another tested and proven method of pain relief still using TENS unit pads called trigger point therapy. This involves locating certain trigger points in your body that can cause chronic pain. Trigger points are areas where the muscles are found to be hyper irritable. According to physiotherapists, the trigger point, as the name suggests, isn’t really where the pain is felt. For instance, if the trigger point is located on your back, the pain may be felt in your neck and there’s a tendency that you will have a headache with the neck being the trigger point satellite.

You may consult your physiotherapist to help locate your trigger points so you can already start the therapy for pain relief. During a trigger point therapy, TENS unit pads are placed on the trigger points. Once the TENS machine is turned on and the current strength is set to a specified level, signals will then be sent to the nerves through the skin. Pain is felt less or not at all since the signals sent by the electrodes interfere with the signals coming from the trigger point. In just 20 to 30 minutes, you will already achieve pain relief.