Did you know that you don’t always have to strain a muscle or sprain a ligament in order to feel pain? Deep inside your body are the cogs that keep your body ticking over… your organs. We have lots of organs inside us: The heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, gallbladder, and more… Pain can be triggered if or when something goes wrong with these organs, and sometimes that pain is felt in a completely different part of the body than where the organ is located! This can lure you in to thinking that something is wrong with that body part when really there isn’t. This may sound confusing so we’ll explain further…

In scientific terms, we are referring to a phenomenon called viscero-somatic pain or a viscero-somatic reflex. ‘Viscero’ refers to ‘organ’ and ‘somatic’ refers to ‘body part’. So, by definition, viscero-somatic pain is pain that comes from an organ that is felt in a specific body part. And for each organ, there is a specific body part or parts that you will generally feel the pain in. It all comes down to how the body is wired in the nervous system. We’ll give you an example to make this a little clearer…

When someone has a heart attack, the classic symptom is chest pain (although not always). However, they will often experience other symptoms such as left-sided neck, jaw, shoulder and arm pain. The reason for this is when the heart muscle becomes devoid of oxygen from a blocked artery, a nerve signal is sent to the spinal cord and up towards the brain to alert the brain that something is wrong. At the same level of the spinal cord where those heart signals enter, there are also other nerves entering that relate directly to the muscles and skin from the neck, jaw, shoulder and arm. The theory is that the brain cannot distinguish where the problem is coming from, due to the close proximity of the nerves in the spinal cord, and therefore you may feel pain in both the chest and in these other areas.

A problem with the liver or gallbladder can give pain symptoms in the abdomen and also in the right shoulder. It’s for the same reason as above, but just a slightly different wiring for that organ.

As your Osteo specialists, we can help with working out why you have pain in your body by looking for certain signs and symptoms that we suspect might be the cause of what’s happening to you. These may include: