Oldies Are Goldies
A summary from the book Explain Pain Supercharged by Lorimer Mosely and David Butler
With age comes wisdom. But age may bring a lot of other baggage as well! Our society holds many beliefs and perceptions about getting older, and some of these are myths which need to be challenged. Lorimer Mosely and David Butler, in their excellent book Explain Pain Supercharged, tackle some of the most common myths about ageing and pain that persist in our culture and may make us unintentionally ageist.
Pain is not an inevitable part of aging. Older individuals do sometimes have more illnesses and surgeries than younger folk. But, as some problems become more common, others become less common. The research suggests that on average, older people may have equal or less pain than younger people.
Pain does not necessarily get progressively worse as you age. Even if we have pain now, that does not mean it is going to keep getting worse as we age. Pain will come and go just like it did when we were younger. This is very important to remember when we have scans showing age-related changes, such as joint osteoarthritis. Although the findings on our scans may get progressively worse, they do not mean we will have pain. It has been shown countless times in the research that degenerative changes or damage on a scan has no relevance to the amount of pain the person feels! For more examples, see this blog on medical scans.
It is not always best to “push through the pain”. A stoic “grin and bear it” approach to dealing with pain is very common among older people but maintaining this mindset for a long time can lead to depression, which can in turn lead to more pain. We can seek help for our pain just as we did when we were younger. We should find a health professional with up-to-date ways of helping manage pain – especially through education, activity and exercise. For more information see the Pain section of our website.
And here’s a bit of extra good news - Mosely and Butler have quoted a 2002 study which showed that people with positive self-perceptions of ageing actually live longer than those who hold negative self-perceptions!
1. Moseley GL, Butler DS 2017 Explain Pain Supercharged, Chapter 9, Noigroup, Adelaide
2. Levy B et al 2002 Longitudinal benefit of positive self-perceptions of aging on functional health. J Geront B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 57: 409-417