Many of us have been misled into thinking pain is a problem.Headache? Numb your body’s ability to feel it. Gall bladder malfunctioning? Surgically remove it. Upset stomach? Artificially calm it. Sore throat? Chemically soothe it. High cholesterol? Take a drug to lower it.Virtually all of these so-called solutions share one thing in common: They make the symptom the problem rather than attending to the underlying cause.Imagine if you approached your car with the same attitude. Engine noise? Turn up the radio. Annoying vibrations at highway speeds? Drive slower. Engine temperature in the red zone? Turn off the air conditioner. Oil pressure dangerously low? Ignore the gauge. Squealing brakes? Turn the radio up even louder!Ridiculous, right? Yet, many of us employ this attitude when it comes to how our body functions. We occupy this miraculous self-healing, self-regulating organism, and if we listen it warns us when things are amiss – first, with a little whisper then a serious warning. Or, if we ignore things long enough our body will start shouting.But, we have a choice: Address the underlying cause (fix) or merely quiet the warning sign (patch).An ache or pain is why many people begin chiropractic care. Pain is described in a variety of ways – severe or mild; acute or chronic; irritating or annoying; sharp or dull; localized or general.But pain is not the problem! Pain is a symptom, an indicator, a warning. If you awoke at night to your smoke alarm blaring, would you get up and pull the battery out? I hope you look for the smoke, the fire – the cause of the smoke alarm.If there’s a problem, it’s the meaning we attach to the pain.When we meet patients who are in pain, besides being compassionate, our first thought is that they must have exceeded some physical, chemical or emotional limit to which they can no longer adapt. Pain is your body’s way of saying that it has had enough. So, while we will discuss your pain with you, we’re even more interested in what was the underlying cause of the pain. How did it happen? Has it been present a long time? What circumstances brought it on? Additionally, it is important to discover what kinds of changes the patient should make to avoid this in the future.The beauty of chiropractic care is that it produces great results by attending to the cause, rather than merely suppressing the symptoms.Palmer Chiropractic, PC719-494-1395www.palmer-chiropractic.com
