If you have been told your pain is just part of getting older, that is not the whole story. Modern pain science shows that pain is produced by the brain in response to what the nervous system perceives as danger, rather than directly by tissue damage. In a large review of spinal imaging in people without back pain, disc degeneration was found in an estimated 96% of people aged 80 (Brinjikji et al, 2015). Age on its own is rarely the whole explanation, which means there is often more worth exploring than you have been told.