Health & poetry

Healing Back Pain

I've put off writing this post for many years because I know it will be controversial. But we're a few days from Christmas, and I also know this post will be a wonderful gift for some people.

Chronic or intermittent pain, often located in the back, neck, and/or buttocks, is a major driver of personal suffering and reduced productivity in the US and other affluent nations. While pain can obviously have a variety of structural causes, such as sprained ankles or bruising, garden-variety back pain usually doesn't. I've come to believe that such pain is usually psychosomatic in nature-- in other words, caused by the brain but resulting in physical signs and symptoms in the body. It's widely accepted that a person's mental state can affect pain perception, but this idea goes further. Pain isn't just exacerbated by a person's mental state; it's often entirely caused by it.

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