Podiatrist · Specialist in Biomechanics · Founder of VOLKAN
"The body does not distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional threat. It only knows it needs to prepare to respond."
"I haven't changed anything... but it hurts more"
There are patients who come to the consultation completely bewildered.
They have not increased their training.
They have not changed their footwear.
They do not remember any impact.
Nothing special has happened from a physical standpoint.
However, the pain has returned.
When we continue talking, other details often emerge.
A job change.
A family concern.
Weeks of little sleep.
A time of uncertainty.
And then we understand something important.
Although the tissues may not have changed much, the organism has.
Because the body never responds solely to what we do.
It also responds to how we live.
Stress is not just in the mind
When we hear the word stress, we tend to think of something psychological.
But stress is also profoundly biological.
It is a response that has allowed our species to survive for thousands of years.
In the face of a threat, the organism needs to prepare.
The heart beats faster.
Breathing changes.
Muscles tighten.
Attention is directed towards what the brain considers important.
The whole system enters a state of heightened vigilance.
For a while, that response is extraordinarily useful.
The problem arises when it stops being a specific response and becomes a permanent state.
A more vigilant brain interprets the body differently.
Imagine that a city receives a high-risk alert.
The police increase surveillance.
Checks multiply.
Alarms trigger more easily.
It does not necessarily mean that there is a greater danger.
It means that the system is more sensitive.
With the body, something similar happens.
When stress persists for weeks or months, the nervous system can become more vigilant.
It starts to pay more attention to certain signals.
Some discomforts that previously went unnoticed are now more evident.
The threshold for activating protective responses may decrease.
Not because the body is broken.
But because the brain considers it needs to observe everything that happens more closely.
We breathe differently... and we also move differently.
There is another aspect that we rarely associate with biomechanics.
Breathing.
In stressful situations, we tend to breathe faster and more superficially.
The diaphragm participates less.
The accessory muscles work more.
The thorax remains more rigid.
And that way of breathing modifies the muscle tone of the entire trunk.
The posture changes.
The equilibrium can also change.
The coordination stops being so efficient.
Not because breathing poorly automatically causes an injury.
But because it alters an important part of the system that organizes movement.
What does this have to do with barefoot?
More than it seems.
When a person starts a transition to barefoot during a period of high stress, little recovery, and accumulated fatigue, the body has fewer resources to adapt.
Not because the footwear is the problem.
But because any adaptation process needs a nervous system capable of learning and reorganizing.
Barefoot does not happen only in the feet.
It happens in a complete organism.
And that organism is also conditioned by the context in which it lives.
What I see every day in consultation
There are times when several patients come in with very similar discomfort.
When I explore them, I find reasonably prepared tissues.
There are no significant injuries.
The training has not changed.
But their lives have changed.
An exam.
A move.
The arrival of a child.
The loss of a family member.
A period of uncertainty.
When we understand that context, treatment stops focusing only on the structure that hurts.
It starts to look at the organism that is trying to adapt to everything that is happening around it.
Because people don't enter the consultation leaving their life at the door.
They bring with them everything they are experiencing.
What can you do from today
The next time a discomfort appears, add one more question to the ones we have already learned to ask ourselves.
Don't just think:
"What have I done with my body?"
Ask yourself too:
"How has my life been over the past few weeks?"
Maybe you'll discover that training hasn't been the only important change.
And understanding the context is often the first step to understanding movement.
🔬 In a sentence
Stress modifies the way the nervous system organizes movement and processes signals from the body.
The most important idea
The organism never responds only to the tissues.
It responds to the whole set of information it receives.
The physical load.
The rest.
The sleep.
The emotions.
The previous experiences.
The context.
Everything is part of the same biological conversation.
That's why understanding biomechanics requires understanding the person who moves.
We don't treat feet.
We don't treat knees.
We do not treat tendons.
We treat human beings who are continuously trying to adapt to their environment.
A question to reflect on
Think about the last time pain appeared or increased.
Was it only the result of physical effort... or did it coincide with a particularly demanding stage of your life?
In the next article…
Throughout the blog we have talked about load, adaptation, sleep, stress, and movement.
However, we still have not addressed an element that conditions all of the above.
Breathing.
We breathe more than twenty thousand times a day and yet, we rarely think about it.
Can the way we breathe modify balance?
Does it influence trunk stability?
Can it alter movement coordination?
In the next chapter we will discover that breathing is not just a function to obtain oxygen. It is also a tool that the nervous system uses to organize posture, regulate muscle tone, and adapt to the demands of the environment.