12 Mar Why Do You Get Aches and Pains?
Do you find yourself with aches and pains each day with no explainable reason? Millions of people suffer from minor or chronic pain each day. Studies show that pain affects more people than diabetes, cancer and heart disease combined. Millions suffer from back pain, while others have pain recovering from injuries or dealing with chronic conditions. If you have aches and pains for no discernible reason, your lifestyle or nutrition could be to blame. If you come into our office, we can provide thorough tests to determine the cause of your pain. We also have many physical therapy services that can help stop your aches and pains. Find out more today!
Aches Can Be a Pain
Did you know that chronic pain affects more Americans than cancer, diabetes and heart disease combined? That report comes straight from the National Institutes of Health. Headache pain affects 45 million Americans. Lower back pain affects 31 million Americans, causing disability in many of them. You get aches and pains from most chronic diseases and conditions. These symptoms are the reason why most people use the health care system. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 76.2 million Americans (or 1 in 4) have chronic pain that lasts more than 24 hours at a time. Chronic pain is the most common cause of long-term disability.
Why You Get Aches and Pains
Your body responds to injuries and problems in the body by sending your brain signals of pain. You wouldn’t know you have a torn muscle or a broken bone if your nerves didn’t communicate with your brain, telling you exactly where something hurts. In a way, aches and pains are good, because they are a sign that something needs to have attention in your body. However, they can be a major pain and upset in millions of people’s lives. Common causes for aches and pains include:
- Nerve damage (neuropathy), caused by diseases and injuries
- Spinal injury or compression
- Pinched nerves
- Degeneration due to age, lifestyle or secondary illness
- Hereditary problems such as scoliosis and rheumatoid arthritis
- Car accidents and sports injuries
- Poor nutrition/nutrient deficiencies
- Tobacco or alcohol use
- Lack of sleep or lack of healthy habits
Rate Your Level of Pain
There are many different types of pain depending on where the pain is located and how strong the pain is. Some examples of different types of pain include:
- Central Pain – Pain initiated or sensed in the central nervous system as a result of injury.
- Chronic Pain – Long-lasting pain that goes on for weeks, months and even years at a time.
- Breakthrough Pain – Discomfort that overwhelms any pain relief already being delivered by analgesics.
- Neuropathic Pain – Pain caused by damaged or defective nerves that cause neuropathy symptoms in patients such as aches and pains, numbness and tingling.
- Headache – Pain felt in the head, usually above or behind the ears or the eyes.
Millions of people suffer from chronic aches and pains. Your pain threshold is the lowest amount of pain that you are just barely able to detect. When you have chronic pain and see a medical professional, they will ask you what your pain intensity scale is. That is generally a measurement on a scale of 1-10 of how intense your pain is. Even if your pain measurement is only a 2, you still don’t want to live with that pain! Rehabilitative or chiropractic therapies can help decrease major and minor aches and pains that you feel.
Inflammation and Headaches
Inflammation is a major cause of pain that happens with many chronic conditions and as a result of injury. You get inflammation as your body’s response to eliminate foreign virus, agents or pathogens that it finds harmful to the body. For example, you get an allergy because your body thinks something is harmful to it. So it swells and gets inflamed to try to rid your body of that substance. Inflammation also happens to help your body heal from injury, protecting the injured site as it heals. However, chronic inflammation (such as what happens with the joints of people with arthritis) can damage your body’s tissues over time. Inflammation causes aches and pains in millions of people with osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis, ulcers, asthma and more.
One of the most common types of aches and pains are migraines and headaches. The term “headache” is named so because of what it is—an ache in your head. Approximately 45 million Americans have frequent headaches each year, or about 1 in 6 people. 80-90% of people suffer from tension headaches, which is pain in the entire head instead of one specific spot. About 17% of people suffer from migraines (sometimes several times a week), which can be so debilitating that people can’t work, stand up or complete basic tasks. These are only 2 examples of chronic aches and pains that people get. You can only imagine how many thousands of other conditions there are out there that give people aches and pains!
Relieving Aches and Pains
You don’t want to live with aches and pains. The best way to combat them is non-invasively, meaning you should seek natural solutions instead of surgery, which can cause you even more pain. At our facility, we have anti-inflammatory joint injections to help chronic pain. Our chiropractic care and physical therapy services can help you deal with chronic conditions and heal from injuries. If your aches and pains are from your lack of nutrition, we have counseling and tests for that. No matter the cause of your pain, we have some way that we can reduce the aches and pains you feel. Don’t go another day feeling less than your best! Call Mile High Spine & Pain Center today at (720) 507-0080 and get on the path to a pain-free life!