Stop Using Age As An Excuse

Stop using age as an excuse

Age is often an excuse we hear thrown around by new clients all the time. 

‘I’ve got back pain because I’m old’.

‘It’s wear and tear because of my age’.

‘My pain is never going to go away because I’m old’.

There’s so many different variations of this excuse that we hear almost everyday in the clinic, and it’s something we’re working hard to change. You don’t have back pain because you’re old. You don’t have arthritis because you’re old. You don't have to put up with pain just because you’re old.

Most of our clients are between the ages of 40 and 60, and probably wouldn’t like it if someone referred to them as old. Yet they still try to use the excuse of being old. Our age is one of the few things in life we have no control over. It's determined by our birth date, and will continue to increase at a consistent rate until we die.

There's absolutely nothing we can do about our chronological age.

(We have a whole other blog on your biological age vs chronological age if you want to learn more about how you CAN change your age).

But this blog is about a conversation I had with someone much younger. It was a 24 year old lad who had put off seeking help for his back pain because he thought he was too young. 

He’d already been living with back pain for over 2 years. He’d tried all the self help things he knew about, exercising, finding stretches on youtube, using hot and cold therapy, over the counter painkillers. He’d exhausted all the options he had available to do himself, with very little success.

Then his pain got worse. It got so bad that he was afraid to leave the house in case he got stuck somewhere and couldn't move. He stopped seeing friends because he was in too much pain to enjoy anything. He couldn't sleep as the pain was waking him up in the night. He decided to go to his GP, gave him some stronger painkillers and referred him for 6 sessions of physio. He got some short term relief, but the pain soon came back. He became fearful of movement, and started to get concerned about what his future looked like.

When he came to see us, we asked him why he’d waited so long to get it checked out properly. His answer? 

He didn’t think he was old enough to see someone like us, so didn't want to waste our time. 

Using age as an excuse is not just damaging to people who are older and have resigned themselves to the fact that they'll have to live in pain forever because they're old. It also discourages younger people from seeking help because they don't think they should be wasting our time when there are so many other older people that need help.

If you're in pain, do something about it. Don't wait until it becomes completely debilitating just because you think you're too old or too young to seek help. No one deserves to live in pain, especially when it's a false excuse society has created. 

Most of our clients are aged between 40-60. Our youngest clients are newborn babies. We've delivered over £100,000 worth of free care to children. Our oldest clients are in their 80’s and 90’s. There is no age limit to health. 

If you have any health concerns, or experience pain at any time, don't put off seeking help. Get yourself booked in for a consultation and we’ll see what options are available to you and help you get back to a happy and healthy pain free life.