Garth Rattray

Pain is a major reason for visiting the doctor. Back pain, for instance, can be a real 'headache'. Although no one (except masochists) likes pain, it isn't always a bad thing.

In a recent Cable News Network (CNN) exposé on a condition called, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA), the case of four-year-old Roberto Salazar was highlighted. In it, his parents are quoted as saying that a world without pain is hell.

People like little Roberto will gnaw their tongues and lips, damage their eyes and even fracture major bones without pain. Unfortunately, even if they survive all that trauma and intercurrent infection, they are at risk of dying at a young age from overheating because they cannot sweat. So, as unpleasant as it is, we obviously need pain for survival.

Acute pain is nature's way of bringing a problem to our attention, but chronic pain (the kind that arthritis and tumours produce, for example) is mostly useless. Interestingly, pain (acute or chronic) is often extremely useful for one unexpected reason: it causes many people (who would not otherwise do so) to seek out a doctor.

It is not unusual for someone to turn up complaining of a pain somewhere and end up being diagnosed with high blood pressure, high blood glucose and/or high cholesterol (all are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease - our number one killer). Whenever this happens, I tell patients that they should thank God for the pain because without it they would not come in and we would not discover the painless, but potentially life-threatening problem(s) lurking quietly inside. The pain would not kill them, but those risk factors would for sure.

High-risk conditions

Additionally, many people who know that they suffer from high-risk conditions stop taking medication or allow their medication(s) to run out. They enter a dangerous state of denial and stay away from doctors until some pain or the other gives them cause for concern.

Most presumably 'healthy' people never get a check-up until and unless a troublesome pain emerges. I vividly remember a family friend who turned up because he had slipped, almost fell off a ladder and developed a pain in his right shoulder. He had his regular physician but, since he was already sitting on the couch, I suggested that he allow me to do a quick examination. I found him to have noticeable lymph nodes (glands) on both sides of his neck and investigations subsequently proved him to be suffering from a type of leukaemia.

Gas pain

Patients often blame the enigmatic and ubiquitous 'gas' for pain in the chest, head, back, muscles and even joints. As far as they are concerned, rubbing the offending area and belching confirms its presence. However, when so-called 'gas pain' is confined to one particular area (like the chest or head, for instance), we take a keen interest in unravelling the mystery as soon as possible because it could be signalling a sinister malady that deserves urgent attention.

As a general rule, the older we become, the more at risk we are for just about everything. Ageing is the single most risky event in our lives. At some point the risks involved in ageing catch up with us and we fall victim to one or several disease processes.