Why Do Some People Have Pain With No Identifiable Problem?

Chiropractic article

One thing that becomes apparent about problems in the human body is that they don't relate to pain. We often try to relate pain to an identifiable problem. People will often have blood tests showing some abnormal findings. 

For instance, someone can have an uptick in inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein for an autoimmune disease yet never manifest the disease. Other factors at work include whether a person was exposed to toxins. People can go their whole lives with an abnormal finding and bury the doctors who detected it.

Another obvious example is the PCR for COVID-19. Many people had positive PCR tests yet never developed the infection. The reason is that there are factors such as viral load and the robustness of a person's immune system.

A similar process happens with the spine. People can have significant spinal degeneration yet feel fine and are very active. Yet others with good-looking spines, as they appear on X-rays, can experience much pain. Or, there may be pain in one area of the back, but another area that doesn't look good has no symptoms. So why is the symptom in the good-looking area and not in the area that has an obvious problem?

These two X-rays would be considered fairly normal by most standards. On the left, there is a nice forward C-curve of the neck, which is the proper configuration. The view on the right is back to front, and the vertebrae look in fairly good alignment. However, this patient was having a lot of neck pain, stiffness, and headaches.

So, how do we explain this situation?