The Long Shadow of a Painful Childhood

Does our childhood shape the physical pain we feel as adults? To find out, researchers analyzed data from over 200,000 people across 22 countries, asking them about their current level of bodily pain and about 13 different experiences from their childhood. The findings reveal a powerful connection between early life and later-life pain.

“The aches and pains we feel as adults can be echoes of childhood stress, our bodies carrying the memory of early hardship.”

Adults who faced significant challenges as children were more likely to experience physical pain decades later. This included people whose parents had divorced or died, those who grew up in families with severe financial struggles, those who felt like an outsider in their own family, and especially those who had been physically or sexually abused. For example, adults who experienced abuse in childhood had a 25% higher risk of reporting significant pain compared to those who did not. Even a child's own health mattered: those who reported being in poor health growing up were more likely to be in pain as adults.

Surprisingly, attending religious services more frequently at age 12 was also linked to more adult pain. Researchers think this might be because children who were already suffering sought comfort in religion, not that religion itself caused the pain. This study shows that our bodies can carry the memory of early hardship. The aches and pains we might dismiss as just part of life could be echoes of childhood stress, telling a story about our entire life journey, not just our current physical condition.