Comment by brazzy
4 hours ago
> Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. If I sprain my ankle it only hurts when I lean on it. Because it's healing. So I don't. Why would headaches or other "inconvenient" pains be different?
Pain is also suffering, and there is no virtue in suffering needlessly.
Even more importantly, there's also chronic pain, which can severely affect quality of file permanently and is essentially an illness all of its own. Research supports the concept of "pain memory", where chronic pain develops as the result of leaving the pain from a temporary condition untreated.
None of this is in disagreement with my argument and comes across as actively ignoring the part where I explain that I am not advocating to "walk it off".
The discussion started in the context of taking painkillers regularly for things like "inconvenient head-aches" without pausing to investigate what causes those headaches. It should be clear from the context that I am not talking about something like people struggling with migraines. I know they try to figure out not to have them in the first place, and if they do have them deserve all the pain relief they can get. I've had migraines myself growing up.
Nobody is saying that people who suffer from chronic pain shouldn't have a relief from their suffering. But as another comment pointed out: the US seems to have a big issue with untreated conditions in general than other countries.Not in the sense of not treating the pain, but in the sense of not treating the conditions leading to pain. You don't even have paid sick leave apparently. Tackle issues like that and there will be fewer chronic pain sufferers to begin with.