The story of pain, and health (part 1)
If you have been in an auto accident or you are looking to improve your health, we can help. Give us a call to schedule your same-day appointment.
The story of pain, and health (part 1)
We specialize in chiropractic interventions for injuries, accidents and recovery
Welcome to Five Minutes of Health. Doctor Verg with you, specializing in injury and recovery of the motor vehicle accidents. Today I want to talk with you about pain. The questions we will discuss are: Prevalence of pain all over the world, what regions are most effective and why? What can be done about the pain? What different types of treatment exist for chronic pain.
Globally more and half of the people, 56% to be exact, claim to have experienced the pain on a weekly basis. Pain is most prevalent in countries such as Australia, the US, Mexico, Canada, Rumania, Russia, Philippine, Spain, Colombia, and Portugal. These places are reporting of average 61% or more of pain on weekly basis.
If you were wondering what the least country is? It is China (40% or under). Now, do I believe those statistics completely? Probably not. China is very large by land and population. A significant area is rural and remote. Doubting these numbers would be justified. Other countries from 41% to 50% (or under 50% or less) of pain reported are Germany, Kenia, Japan, Singapore, Malesia, and Nigeria. I would trust a Germany’s, Japan’s, and Singapore’s and even Malaysia's statistics here.
Why that is?
We can speculate that there are probably many factors. We don't have a lot of information, but on a regular and weekly basis people most commonly experience body pain in their back, low back (at 28%), then neck (25%). Increased prevalence of pain is reported among women and parents of children 12 and under. Parents with children under 12 are not taking care of their health with diet, exercise, and chiropractic because they are in the hamster wheel of life. Women have more hormonal disbalances and less muscle mass to support the spine and therefore are more prone to injury and general pain. Regardless, people with pain are more prone to degenerative changes in the spine.
We must fight gravity all the time and gravity are our friend and foe. There is a big opiate crisis you probably have heard about across the world but more so in the United States. I will not bore you with statistics that you can look up, but the fact is many people don’t realize they have an opiate addiction until much later. Here we come to why so many people are overweight and generally unhealthy. You can become addicted to sugar or to food in general to cope with the pain.
For us, humans, breaking an addiction to coffee, to foods, sugar or drugs is difficult to say the least. These substances play with our mind and change our brain for the worse. We know when pain becomes chronic, it too changes the brain. So chronic pain is a different animal and should be hunted accordingly. So, we want to prevent chronic pain instead.
How can we prevent chronic pain and treat it?
One way would be to have better spinal hygiene or checking your spine for problems or problem areas that are developing. There is movement that we need in our body. Just like you I know “the truth” but fail to follow it. Movement is life and we need to check for not only regional movement or general movement but also segmental movement of our spine. So, before I continue to make the case for health and for chiropractic keep in mind, that the simplest way to start on the journey of health is to get start seeing a chiropractor to improve the movement of your in your body. Many of us know what we ought to do, but even I had to seek out care to start my health journey on my own. Limitation of movement is one of the reasons for why the degenerative process begins. So, degeneration can be prevented with chiropractic spinal adjustments, specific therapeutic exercises, deep tissue massage, rehab exercises and traction therapy.
But one other way to prevent chronic pain and reduce degenerative changes in the spine is general inflammation in our body. We will talk about diet and supplements that can decrease general inflammation in our body later.
There is a study that compares Chinese women to women in America. And they found that they seem to have less osteoporosis. The researchers think it’s due to a large consumption of green tea. And we know green tea extract decrees inflammatory processes all the body. It is also important to note that in China people still walk and move much more which is just as important as an anti-inflammatory diet.
Technically because Chinese women have less body mass, they should have more osteoporosis. Smaller body mass is directly associated with osteoporosis because the less overall mass the less dense your bones are (2). At menopause women begin to lose muscle mass, and bone mass. This in Chinese women we don't see that because they have less inflammation.
So, inflammation equals arthritis, equals a lot of pain and problems. We can stop that by increasing movements and decreasing body system inflammation.
Will see you next time.
2. Hannan MT, Felson DT, Dawson-Hughes B, et al. Risk factors for longitudinal bone loss in elderly men and women: the Framingham Osteoporosis Study. J Bone Miner Res 2000;15:710–20.
We look forward to meeting you
To prevent long-term effects of your your low back pain, you should seek immediate treatment. Left undiagnosed or untreated, a low back injury can lead to chronic pain, loss of function, and even permanent damage to the vertebrae and nervous system. We offer proper diagnosis and treatment for low back injuries with same-day appointments available.
