It’s interesting to hear how different people describe the pain they experience and also their individual responses to it. Some people understand the significance of this symptom (pain) while others unfortunately ignore this important message from their body.

Pain is a warning signal your body uses to make you aware of a potential problem. It acts like a smoke detector when a building is on fire. The annoying buzz is only a warning signal while the actual problem is the fire. The pain itself is not the problem; it’s only the annoying buzz.

I frequently hear people say, “But it doesn’t hurt much,” or, “It doesn’t bother me very often,” when they have some type of health complaint. People seem to use pain as a gauge to measure how “bad” a problem is. This is unfortunate because people feel pain in different ways and not all health problems cause immediate discomfort.

Pain is one of the last symptoms of a problem to show up and one if the first to go away during the healing process. Pain may also come and go during the initial development of some health problems. Also, even without any pain, an underlying health concern may still be present. For example, think of the unsuspecting heart attack victim who felt fine up until the attack occurred.

Remember the cause of the problem should be addressed too, not just the symptom. Pain occurs because your body is trying to tell you something. Don’t ignore it by suppressing the message.

When you take something to suppress pain, you’re only removing the warning signal and not affecting the underlying problem. It’s just like taking the battery out of the smoke detector to stop it from going off instead of putting out the fire.

Listen to your body. Address the cause. Keep your body healthy.