Happy New Year to all my readers! Hope you all had a good festive break.
Today's post talks about the common misconceptions about the relationship between pain and the aging process.
It is often assumed that aging and increased pain go hand in hand and that more pain is inevitable as we age. However we need to consider where pain originates from.
I recently posted a link to a video about pain which explained how it's origin is in our brain and it does not reflect the degree of tissue damage. Rather, it is the result of a very clever mechanism that alerts us to danger, but sometimes it happens incorrectly and unhelpfully - obviously still very distressingly.
As we age, we accumulate various traumas, physical and emotional, and if these are unresolved, we also accumulate coping and compensation strategies which can be accompanied by pain. This can persist long after the tissues have healed. Often, medical professionals brush off pain signals in the ageing population as a natural part of getting older, and I have seen my clients report that their injuries were not looked at and painkillers were the only option made available.
I firmly believe that even long standing issues can be addressed by therapy-based approaches - I have clients well into their 80ies who we can help. Have a read of the article below to see what other common misconceptions are prevalent. Don't get fobbed off by the first doctor who says that you need to accept your aches and pains!
