Key messages

• How you understand and cope with pain affects your pain and well as your life.
• The amount of pain you may be experiencing is NOT necessarily related to the severity of your injury or tissue damage
• When to body thinks it’s in danger it produces pain as a protective mechanism. This is a normal response to what your brain perceives as a threat.

• Pain is a multi-factorial beast; the pain experience of the brain relies on many sensory cues.

Visual person? Watch this short You Tube clip explaining pain or read on...

The process of producing pain

• Danger sensors are located all over the body.

• When the excitement within a neurone (an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals) reaches the critical level, a message is sent towards the spinal cord.
  
• When a danger message reaches the spinal cord, it causes release of excitatory chemicals.
• Sensors in the danger messenger neuron are activated by said excitatory chemicals and when the excitement level of the danger messenger neurone reaches the critical level… a danger message is sent to the brain.
• The message is processed through the brain. If the brain decides you are in danger and you need to act, it will produce pain.
  
• The brain activates several systems that work together to get you out of danger.

Once the body thinks it is in danger… the acute phase

• Tissue damage causes inflammation which directly activates danger sensors and makes neurons more sensitive.
• Inflammation in the short term promotes healing.
• Tissue healing depends on the blood supply and demands of the tissue involved but all tissues can heal…this is where osteopathy can help, working with fluid mechanics and promoting fluid/blood flow into the area

When the brain takes over in an over-stimulation response …the chronic phase

• When pain persists the danger alarm system becomes more sensitive.
• The danger messenger neurone becomes more excitable and manufactures more sensors for excitatory chemicals and brain starts activating neurones that release excitatory chemicals
• The brain adapts to become better at producing the neuro tag for pain (the pain song)
• Danger sensors in the tissues contribute less and less to the danger message arriving at the brain.

 
This information has been adapted from Moseley and Butler's book “Explain Pain”

What do I look out for?
Not all children present with the “glue” in their ears that is commonly associated with glue ear. The “glue” can build up inside the ear creating pressure on the ear drum. Some common signs of glue ear are

• Your child may be experiencing hearing difficulties. If you notice anything uncharacteristic about their behaviour that may be related to situations where you have expected them to respond to an audio cue, it is worth investigating further.
• If your child has repeated colds or upper respiratory irritations this may result in an episode of glue ear. The bacteria or virus from these infections may find its way to the fluid in the ear.
• Your child may begin to constantly nurse their ear. Playing, scratching, cradling their ear is one way your child is communicating that there may be experiencing some ear pain.
• Discharge from the ear is a sure sign which is not necessarily accompanied with any other symptoms.
  

How can osteopathy help?
Osteopathic treatment can help encourage drainage of the build-up of fluid from the middle. Using gentle hands on treatments the osteopath may choose to work on your child’s head, neck, abdomen or lower body. All techniques used will be to encourage drainage through lymphatic pathways. Research shows that children who have been prescribed antibiotics and or have grommets have fewer repeat episodes of glue ear when osteopathic treatment is also administered (1); therefore potentially reducing the amount of antibiotics your child need to take.

Recent research regarding the experience of osteopathy for glue ear highlights some of the experiences parents had when their child was being treated by an osteopath (2).

 I thought, "Oh, he is never gonna lay still for this guy." So I got his favourite blanket, and sit him up. He was about three or four months or five months old. Somewhere in between that time. And I laid him on the little bed and then the osteopath just put his hands on him and Joe* just went... And that was just it. He instantly stopped. I'll never forget it, he instantly stopped. And he just relaxed over about a period of a few minutes. He just relaxed. God, it was amazing. Amazing. It was amazing.

When the hands are on his head, he used to just go... He seems to be like floating. So  Joe asked me to go there a couple of times to the osteopath.

I trusted the osteopath, I really trusted the type of treatment, and because we could see results and it was all being explained to us, it was great.

*names have been changed to protect privacy.
 
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have questions about glue ear or if you think osteopathy could benefit your child.      
 
1.         Steele KM, Carreiro JE, Haug VJ, Conte JA, Ridpath LC. Effect of osteopathic manipulative treatment on middle ear effusion following acute otitis media in young children: A pilot study. The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. 2014;114(6):436-46.
2.         McCulloch JM. Do you hear me? The caregivers experience of osteopathy for their child's otitis media Unitec Institue of Technology 2017.