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Comment by runawaybottle | Hacker News Reader

You can’t let it dictate anything. If it hurts to go to the gym, still go. Find the constraints that allow you to do what you want to do without aggravating your body too much, and build some pain tolerance. Psychological tolerance is a must as well, but you almost have no choice but to develop that unless you literally want to never progress.

This is advice for people that make it out of their critical treatment phase and now must manage the rest of their life with the aftermath.

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While this is good general advice in my case "toughing it out" actually causes more damage to my joints and makes my condition worse. I learned this early on when downplaying my pain during doctor visits. In my case (rheumatoid arthritis) pain=joint damage. I exercise daily, but have to keep a close eye on my joints to make sure I don't push them too hard. While my "mind" wants to bike/run 10 miles, my joints cannot take the punishment, and no amount to "toughing it out" will make it better.

This is the key statement:

> Find the constraints that allow you to do what you want to do without aggravating your body too much

I can tell you from experience I don’t have joints in certain parts of my body. You have no choice but to tough it out given no choice.

Have you dealt with a serious chronic health issue? It's a lot easier to say these things than to actually do them.

For example, it's a lot harder than it sounds to find the constraints between aggravating your body / causing additional problems, and doing what you want to do. I still struggle with it, five years after my first hospital stay

I interpreted the parent comment as... it's gonna hurt no matter what you do, so you may as well do what you wanna do while managing your condition as needed.

What you have said is a logical response to the problem.

But, unfortunately, when you are in that situation (I was), you are under a lot of pressure and making logical decisions is extremely difficult (I couldn't).

I have, that advice is not from lack of experience.

I get a lot of advice from 20-year olds whose worst brush with illness or injury was a case of the flu, that's why I asked.

This is advice that may work for you but may be dangerous for others. My girlfriend used to have chronic pain and toughing it out simply want an option. It just made things worse.

Your comment about finding the constraints of the body that don’t aggravate things too much is good though.

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