Two suggestions that may seem totally off base to you but may help with pain wherever it is and whatever is causing it.

I have structural pain issues in my back - in fact after a fall where I fractured (and have since healed) my pelvis, radiologists commented more on my severely degenerating spine than the minimally displaced fractures in my pelvis. Indeed the fall also further tweaked my wonky back. I’m determined to avoid surgery if at all possible because the prognosis for surgery giving me relief isn’t very positive and has the possibility of making things worse according to the neurosurgeon where I live. I will go out of state if I have to resort to surgery because of that. I live in a fairly small town.

So - anyway - back when I thought my back was responsible for increasing pain in my leg that (long story short) a hip replacement took care of, I read the book ‘The Way Out’ by Alan Gordon and subscribed to the Curable App for a year. Although the focus is on training your brain to learn how to overcome parasympathetic pain caused by the brain believing it’s helping you by causing pain to protect you, and NOT caused by structural issues, and, even though I definitely had and have structural issues that cause me pain, learning mind/body practices, really, really helped m learn to re-train my brain so to speak. When you have pain, your brain can get your body into an endless loop of pain that’s hard to get out of. There are often psychological issues one isn’t always aware of that also feed into causing the pain. Being a people pleaser, a perfectionist, etc., to name a couple.

Physical therapy has always helped me with my structural issues as well as yoga did before my back started going more wonky on me starting at age 64. I’m 74 now. While hopefully searching for an adaptive yoga class in my area as I could no longer do regular yoga well, I came across Sherry Zak’s Yoga Vista classes online. She has a ton of free videos on YouTube you can check out. Her classes are geared to those over the age of 50 and many of her online classes have students over the age o 80 in them. The Yoga Vista site has over 1,000 online classes covering a myriad of topic taught by many different teachers. A subscription is only $12.99 a month, less if you purchase quarterly, etc. You can watch them at any time, available 24/7, as often as you want and save your favorites. All you need is a chair and an inexpensive folding chair is spot on. A yoga belt or long scarf is also helpful. All exercises are done either sitting on the chair or holding onto the back of the chair. Chair dances are incredible fun as well. Other classes may be more traditional if one is able to get down on the floor to do them.

What surprised me is that those classes did and do more to relieve my pain than my PT exercises do, plus I have a lot of fun in Sherry’s classes although I also follow some other teachers and try out other offerings on the site. I believe that she offers either one or two weeks free to try out the site. Whether it’s because gentle yoga moves use the entire body and there’s a lot of stretching of the body as well as strengthening of muscles that improves one’s flexibility and use of the body, or if it’s the fun involved while doing it that makes it so helpful, or what, but for me, chair yoga and mind/body brain training are two easy to access and not very expensive things to try to mitigate pain. In the case of the mind body work, some people find total release of pain but I imagine that happens most often for those whose pain is strictly parasympathetic and doesn’t include structural issues that cause pain.

Just a couple of ideas that might help while you try to track down initial causes. Even if you’re able to pinpoint exact causes, sometimes the ability to fix those causes is spotty or incomplete on their own.