I was driving to work the other day and listening to Pat Kenny on Newstalk, he announced that he would be interviewing a tech guy about wearable technology that could tell you how you feel.

I don’t know how you feel about that but I felt decidedly odd. The fact is that the human body is an amazingly complex biological machine that far exceeds the capacity of any computer at the moment and we are considering outsourcing our ability to feel, to a computer? We have already done the same with fit bits and apps on the pone to tell us when we are doing enough exercise, or not, rather than listening to what our bodies are telling us.

You may be thinking this has nothing to do with chiropractic or musculoskeletal medicine but I think it does.  One of the biggest warning signs that our bodies give to us that something is not quite right is pain. We often ignore pain putting it down to old age, or hard work, or some accident long ago. 

I am not talking about the sort of pain that we get if we cut ourselves, or fall, that heals quickly, but persistent pain, even mild, that just won’t go away. Pain for which  you cannot think of any reason why it should be there. Additionally any sort of pain that requires long-term courses of painkillers even over the counter painkillers should be taken seriously and assessed. Masking pain with painkillers is not a solution only a crutch – and long-term use has some potential serious health implications (Marcum & Hanlon, 2010).

I often have patients presenting with knee or hip pain and they will say “it is just arthritis.  I suppose I am getting old”. Conditions like osteoarthritis, often called wear & tear, do not just suddenly develop they develop over a long period of time. Pain is felt when the joint swells and the actual surfaces of the joint are inflamed and damaged. What about the period before this? Often there will be a loss of Range of Motion (ROM). This is very noticeable in your hips and knees, you may not be able to kneel down comfortably any more or find that you are unable to pull your knee to your chest on one side, or there is mild pain that eases with movement.

The idea of wear and tear has a lot of traction in the national psyche and medical literature but to my mind it is not a great description. Often people present with pain on one side and not the other if it was a case of wear & tear wouldn’t we expect both knees to be bad? One of the factors that I always find involved in patients with knee and hip pain is muscle inhibition around the joint. I believe it is this muscle inhibition that sets up the instability in the joint, which over time results in wear & tear.  

What if we could catch this early? And I think we can if we start to listen to what our bodies are telling us. Perhaps it is time to give up the tech and start listening, and get that niggling pain checked out.

Marcum Z.A, Hanlon J.T,(2010) Recognizing the Risks of Chronic Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Use in Older Adults. Ann Longterm Care. 2010; 18(9): 24–27.