Seems fairly rare to hear of someone having a knee, etc that bothers them for years provided it’s been properly treated. But hear about “bad backs” that people fight for decades.
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What we’re learning now about chronic back pain is that in many cases it’s actually about changes in your brain. Say you hurt your back lifting something. Your nerves sense pain and send that information to your brain which registers “pain”. In some people for reasons we don’t fully understand, the nerves then adapt to that sensation, so they will send the signal with less and less input so that your brain registers “pain” even when there is no painful stimuli. If that is the case, your spine can be healed but you will still sense pain. The process of rewriting the brain after this adaptation has occurred is complex and takes a multidisciplinary team to accomplish as well as a a good amount of time and investment from the patient themselves so it’s tough to pull off.
There are some things we know contribute to this, like certain personality types and having a traumatic mechanism of injury. Pain science is a relatively new field and a lot of cool research is being done!
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