Remember in the movie, The Matrix, when Agent Smith was interrogating Morpheus and he said the following,

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.”

Do you ever feel like your reality is defined by pain and suffering?  That is true for over 100 million Americans today.  There are several reasons why people are in pain.  Some are controllable and some are not.  I am speaking about how we react to pain.  If we are really honest most of us just want the pain to stop.  Maybe you have filled out a pain scale at the doctor’s office where they ask you to rate your pain from 1 to 10 where ten is the worst pain ever.  How do you really quantify something that is so subjective? Well, pain costs about $100 billion annually in the U.S. when you consider medical bills and days of work lost.  Ouch!  How much money did you spend on it this past year?  Aspirin, trips to the doctor, staying home from work, lost money on gym membership and more.

Did you ever stop to think that in view of everything that pain is a good thing?  Really. Ask yourself what purpose pain serves.  There is always a reason for pain.  Plain and simple it means that something is wrong and there is tissue damage somewhere. When we consider lower back pain, the number one most common type of pain, there is a plethora of possible causes.  What there isn’t is a problem called pain.  Pain isn’t the problem, the cause is.

So your pain is a good thing because it is telling you that something is wrong or damaged and that you need to do something about it.  If your response to that is to take pain medications either over the counter or prescribed, you aren’t doing yourself any favors, only advocating your problem.

Your pain is trying to save you from doing more damage, keep you out of surgery and push you back to health.  It is how you see it and react to it.  Are you going to cover it up with medication and keep doing the same thing that got you into the problem?  Or are you going to treat your pain like the red flag that it is and root out the real problem and do something that will promote correction and healing of the damaged tissues?

That may mean losing some weight, exercising, eating healthier, changing some habits, massage, acupuncture, and the list goes on.  You might need to consult with a medical or chiropractic doctor, but don’t take a prescription as an answer.  Get to the cause.  Taking a prescription for pain is only going to cover the problem and will only get you by.  Take responsibility for your health, get to the cause and define your life by what your new defined health can afford you in your endeavors, relationships, and life.

For more information on health and simple applications to elevate your vitality, check out our Blog.

Dr. Jeremy Overholt is a chiropractor in Fort Collins, Colorado. To learn more, click HERE.

To schedule a consultation and examination with Dr. Overholt click HERE.

 

Resources:

Institute of Medicine Report from the Committee on Advancing Pain Research

National Centers for Health Statistics

Inner Vitality Chiropractic