According to many people, the ability to ignore pain is a good thing, and pain is simply an obstacle for a person to overcome. It’s tempting to emulate such examples and ignore our own pain but, in reality, pain is a completely necessary element of our body’s proper function. Pain is our body’s messaging system, an internal memo from the nerve to the brain: “Something has gone wrong!” Ignoring that pain isn’t the same as overcoming it, and can lead to very real problems.
1. If pain is allowed to persist long-term, oftentimes more lasting damage begins to appear. As your pain causes you to subconsciously hold yourself differently, your posture will shift over time to adapt to your new stance. Since poor posture is a major contributor to back pain, this creates a cycle of pain. The worse your posture gets, the more pain you find yourself in, causing your posture to deteriorate more and more. Pain in localized areas like your spine start branching out to your hips and your limbs and your ribcage. More and more parts of your internal structure are pushed from their proper placement.
2. Eventually, the impact from your pain can begin to become permanent. Nerve tissue, whether through stress or pinching or simple overwork, can become damaged over time, causing numbness, lack of coordination, or an increased level of pain. Too much pressure on the nerves can cause nerve compression, a very painful condition that can require surgery to fix. The nerves themselves can also stop working properly, and send false signals of pain to the brain with no discernible physical source.
It is extremely important, therefore, to deal with pain properly as early as you can, to prevent it from becoming a more severe and less manageable problem. Everyone’s level and variety of pain is different, and require different treatments, whether it be physical therapy, chiropractic manipulation, or medication. Organizations like the Jacksonville Spine Center exist to diagnose the cause of your pain, and determine the best course of treatment to bring you back to a pain-free life.
