If You Hear This About Your Pain…Run

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Old age elbow pain
Elbow pain due to age?

I often hear patients chalk their pain up to age. “Well, I guess this is what 50 feels like.” “Just turned 30, that’s probably why I hurt.” “Ever since I turned 60 I’ve hurt.” etc etc.


A lot of pain gets blamed on age. But many of you have probably already heard my answer to comments like that – ” I don’t let my 80-year-olds think that.” You don’t have to accept that just because you have gotten older, you’re going to have pain. The research doesn’t support it and neither should you. You can blame wrinkles, grey hair, balding, and more birthday candles to blow out on age, but not pain.


What does happen is we tend to get less active and have less variety in our activities as we get older. Meaning we are less trained or in shape for the stresses in our lives. Being less trained means it’s easier to overload a joint or muscle leading to pain. Age isn’t the causal factor there. The same thing would happen to a 19-year-old if they did the same thing. The fix and the answer aren’t to accept it and lessen how much you do or avoid it outright. The answer most of the time is to be more active and to train properly. So again, you shouldn’t blame your age.


This gets me to my main point today. If I don’t want you blaming your pain on your age. You definitely shouldn’t accept other healthcare or fitness professionals doing just that. I’ve had a few cases like this recently, but one in particular sticks out. A new patient was experiencing “tennis elbow” pain but doesn’t play tennis and didn’t know why there was elbow pain. So this patient went to a healthcare provider and was simply told, “welcome to your 40’s, learn to live with it.”


I couldn’t believe my ears. You’re 40, give up? That’s a grim life considering there are probably another 40 years or more left to live. I’ve treated him 4 times and he now has very little elbow pain left. I’m not bragging about what I did. I didn’t do anything special to him. I simply gave him some guidelines on how to train it to become stronger without inflaming it more and told him to not be afraid of it.


So, if you go to another professional for your pain…first of all, shame on you, you should always come here first! 😉 But all jokes aside, if you are experiencing pain and go to a healthcare or fitness professional and their main answer is, it’s because “you’re fill-in-the-blank age, deal with it…RUN!

If there is something that has been bothering you, please schedule an appointment and we’ll get you some answers!