Watching television, reading magazines or even walking through the grocery store, it’s evident to me that we have a big problem with pain in this country. Over the counter pain relievers, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, prescription narcotic pain relievers, even natural products like CBD oil, all promise pain relief. But here’s the question…
Is pain really the problem?
A colleague of mine, Dr. Perry Nickelston, says, “Pain is a request for change”. In other words, pain is your body’s way of telling you it doesn’t like what you’ve been doing and asking you to do something different.
So pain isn’t really the problem at all – pain is an alarm.
If you woke up at 3am to your smoke alarm going off, would you quickly run and take the batteries out because the sound is keeping you from sleeping? I hope not.
If your car started to ding and the low fuel warning came on, would you put earplugs in and tape over the warning light? I doubt it.
If your head hurts, do you reflexively reach for the bottle of Advil?
If you have heartburn, do you pop a couple of Tums?
If your lower back hurts after sitting at your work desk, do you rub the CBD cream on it at break time?
Here’s my point.
Symptoms are just that – they’re symptoms. Symptoms of an underlying issue. The underlying issue may be that your diet sucks and that’s what’s causing your heartburn. It may be neck and upper back muscle tension from improper breathing and chronic vertebral subluxations that are causing your headaches. It may be poor posture, long-term inactivity and weight gain that are causing your lower back pain.
Most people come to our office with complaints of pain – neck pain, back pain, head pain, arm pain, leg pain, stomach pain. Pain of some sort. Pain is uncomfortable, absolutely! I’m not trying to minimize pain – my point is that if our only goal is pain relief, we will be forever frustrated because we’ve got the wrong goal.
We need to feel the pain, evaluate it, understand it, even embrace it. Only through this process can we fully understand what’s causing it and make the changes necessary to not only feel better, but heal ourselves through the change. Some things you can figure out by yourself, but for most issues, you’ll need a partner to walk through this with you.
I hate to say it, but your medical doctor isn’t really equipped to do this. If you go that route, you’ll likely leave with a prescription for one of the medications I listed earlier.
Now, I hate to say THIS even more – a lot of chiropractors aren’t interested in doing this either. If you walk into your first chiropractic visit and the consultation consists of: “Where does it hurt? OK, lay down here.”, they’re simply treating symptoms. If your chiropractor says, “Come back when you feel like you need to” – they’re simply managing your pain.
Trust me, you don’t want a pain manager.
When you come to Weld Family Clinic to begin your journey toward better health, you’ll find out we’re interested in FAR more than pain relief. We’ll ask a lot of questions. We’ll do a very thorough spinal examination to identify ALL the possible issues. We’ll SHOW you what we found during your in-depth report of findings and we’ll lay out a PLAN to correct the problems, not just relieve the symptoms.
