There is no shortage of remedies designed to make us feel better when pain strikes.
Too often we forget, however, that pain is not really what we should be focusing on.
Getting to the cause of the pain should be our goal. Going only for pain relief moves our attention away from dealing with the source of the problem and delays proper treatment.
Remember that our body is equipped to alert us when there is a problem by sounding an alarm that something is wrong. Usually that signal is pain, but it can be weakness, numbness, burning, tingling, etc.
Obviously there will be times when going for pain relief is the right choice. Acute traumatic events or surgery are clearly situations where this is necessary.
We are constantly inundated with ads promoting products to give us relief from our condition.
We are in the midst of an ongoing opioid crisis. I believe it has been fueled by the medical profession avoiding the treatment for various back problems and instead only focusing on pain relief.
Their approach has been merely an attempt to give symptomatic relief.
It does not address treating the problem so the pain will therefore continue requiring ongoing pain management.
In most situations this will lead to the condition continuing to degenerate and requiring costly and invasive treatment.
So I believe that in most cases the primary treatment should be on correcting the underlying problem and using pain management techniques to ease the pain while the condition is resolving.