Are You Too Old to Get Better?
“I guess I’m just getting old.”
If I could only tell you how many times I’ve heard this phase. About ten years ago when I began working in health care, I should have started keeping count! Unfortunately, phrases like this are commonplace when I’m working with patients and various injuries. While I generally consider myself an easy going person, I can’t help but push back on people when they blame their pain on age. For one, it’s such a self defeating thought! If pain is due to your age and you’re only getting older, how can you really expect to feel better in the future? Mindset is so important when it comes to overcoming injury and you need to get in the right mode if you want to move forward. Secondly, this is truly a false statement! Just because a person is aging does not mean they are beyond help and can’t feel better. Let’s go over a few of my findings while working in health care over the past decade.
Most injuries that I see are not so much a result of aging as they are poor lifestyle habits.
The only way age has any effect on injury is that it has simply given you more time spent with these poor habits. Our modern day society has pushed us in the direction of so many things that cause unnecessary stress on the body and sometimes it can be the simple life changes that put you back on course. Here’s a simple one: Stop sitting so much! Make an effort to stand more throughout your day and you may notice that your lower back pain isn’t so persistent.
Most injuries that I treat span generations.
On average, what’s the earliest age for a lumbar disc herniation? Take a quick guess…. If you guessed 25, you’d be correct! Lower back pain is not an old person problem, it is a potential problem for most adults at any age. This is not only true for lower back pain, but many chronic injuries. In addition to that, the way a person in their 60s fixes their pain is going to be exactly the same as a person in their 20s.
Motivation has been my best meter for a patient’s results.
Throughout the years, I have found that the people who take my advice and do the things they need to do BETWEEN treatments tend to have the best outcomes. When a patient is motivated to get better and works to make it happen, that desire tends to come true at any age. Of course, there’s always exceptions to this finding (sometimes the injury is just too severe), but I have countless examples of older adults recovering faster than a young adult simply because they put in the effort.
Findings in imaging do not correlate well with a person’s perceived pain.
I mentioned this one in my last blog. Research has found that what you see in your x-ray or MRI does not necessary match well with how you feel. In other words, I could pull a random person from the community, take an x-ray of their back, find substantial arthritic change, and that person feels great! Once again, how you treat your body has a strong influence on how you heal. Arthritis is not a death sentence, so don’t treat it like one.
Here’s a fact: Every patient that comes into our office that gets better is younger at the beginning of their treatment and older at the end of it. There you have it; stop using age as your rationale for not getting better! Yes, our healing speed does progressively slow as we age, but healing is still very possible if you do the right things. You may need a little more patience when compared to someone in their 20s, but motivation and focus are what it really takes to improve. Don’t give up, keep pushing, and beat the pain!
– Dr Rob Liguori
