The Trouble with “Normal”: Rethinking Statistics, Health, and the Wisdom of Outliers
The human body thrives on diversity and nuance, just as a river system relies on irregularities and variations.
In both science and society, the word normal carries weight. It signals what is typical, expected, and—often implicitly—what is right. But in my work as an osteopath, I’ve come to see that "normal" is often a misleading concept, especially when it's backed by the statistical frameworks we’ve been taught to trust.
Let’s start at the root of the issue: statistics.
Modern science relies on statistics to make sense of the world. It gives us tools like averages and p-values to identify patterns and make predictions. These tools are useful—but they are not neutral. They come with blind spots. They reduce complexity to clean numbers. They reward what is most frequent and flatten what is rare. And if we’re not careful, they can guide us away from the truth rather than toward it.
The Mirage of the Average
Statistical averages are seductive. They suggest a central truth: a number that represents “how things are.” But this is an illusion. Averages hide the range of experience. They ignore the edge cases, the anomalies, the exceptions—what we call outliers.
Yet in nature—and in health—outliers aren’t mistakes. They are part of the system. They are not “abnormal” in any moral or biological sense. In fact, they often carry wisdom or potential that the average cannot.
Let’s take a broader metaphor:
In a river, most of the water flows in the main channel. But along the edges, the current swirls, loops back, slows down. These irregularities aren't flaws—they help the river adapt, nourish its banks, and carry nutrients where they’re needed. Without them, the river would fail.
Just like that river, the human body thrives on diversity and nuance. Some people heal quickly. Others respond to unexpected treatments. Some show textbook symptoms. Others don’t. None of these are wrong. They are simply expressions of the body’s inherent variability.
When “Normal” Becomes Dangerous
In statistics, when something is common, we call it “normal.” But that doesn’t mean it’s optimal, healthy, or even true.
This confusion between normality and health can be dangerous. Consider pain: chronic pain is statistically common. That makes it normal in the statistical sense¹²³. But should we accept it as inevitable? Absolutely not. The goal of osteopathy is not to treat what's typical, but to understand what each individual body needs to find balance again—even if that path is uncommon.
Likewise, in science, when we overvalue what’s statistically significant, we risk ignoring what's clinically relevant. A result might be "significant" on paper but meaningless in practice. Or worse—it might distract us from more subtle, powerful effects that don’t fit neatly into the statistical model.
In fact, when we look more closely at the data, one of the most fundamental findings across the major UK studies is that between one-third and one-half of adults experience chronic pain. Fayaz et al. (2016) report a pooled prevalence of 43.5%, while Nicholl et al. (2014) found 51.1% of UK Biobank participants reported chronic pain¹³.
That sounds like a majority — and indeed, it is. But what’s often lost in the headline is that these figures are heavily influenced by older populations. Pain increases dramatically with age. According to the Health Survey for England (2017), only 18% of adults aged 16–34 report chronic pain, compared to 53% among those aged 75 and over². Todd et al. (2018) also show that pain severity and opioid use follow a similar pattern, rising with age and clustering in more deprived, older populations¹².
So while chronic pain may be “normal” in a statistical sense, that normality is not evenly distributed. It is not “normal” for a healthy 25-year-old to live with chronic, unresolved pain — and treating it as if it were can lead to clinical complacency or missed opportunities for resolution.
In osteopathy, we don't let statistical averages obscure individual reality. What matters isn’t how common a symptom is across a population, but what it means for this person, right now, in this body.
Why Averages Obscure Reality: The Hidden Lives Behind the Data
This age-skewed distortion isn’t a one-off. It’s a pattern that repeats itself ad infinitum throughout survey data — across health, lifestyle, and disease research. The illusion of “normal” often emerges not from any deep truth, but from the averaging of unequal groups.
Whether we’re looking at pain, inflammation, metabolic disorders, or mental health, the numbers are always tangled in demography. And within that tangle lie layers: age, yes — but also income, stress load, job type, sleep quality, gut microbiome diversity, movement habits, community connection, food access, trauma history. These aren’t fringe details. They are the living conditions out of which health or disease emerge.
Averages compress all of this — and in doing so, bury the subtle interplay of factors that actually determine whether a person gets sick or stays well.
Two people may share a diagnosis but live entirely different lives. One walks daily, eats well, feels supported, and sleeps deeply. The other is isolated, sedentary, undernourished, and overworked. The numbers may classify them as the same — statistically normal — but their bodies are telling entirely different stories.
In osteopathy, we’re not interested in treating the aggregate. We listen for the pattern inside the person — the unique constellation of relationships between lifestyle, environment, and body that makes their condition make sense. Healing begins there — not at the median, but at the margins, in the truth of this individual life.
Outliers Carry the Future
One of the most dangerous habits of statistical thinking is the tendency to discard the unusual—to treat it as noise rather than signal. But innovation, healing, and transformation often come from those very anomalies.
In the cosmos, most stars are average. But it's the rare outliers—supernovas, neutron stars, black holes—that forge new elements and shape galaxies. Without them, life as we know it wouldn’t exist.
In osteopathy, it’s often the subtle shifts—the strange patterns, the unexpected responses—that reveal the most. The patient who doesn’t follow the typical recovery curve may actually be showing us something important: a hidden pattern, a deeper need, a doorway to deeper healing.
Rethinking “Normal” in Healthcare
In my work, I’m far less interested in what is statistically average and far more attuned to what is true for you. Your body isn’t a data point. It’s a living, intelligent system. Sometimes your experience will align with the norm. Sometimes it won’t. Neither is better. Both are valid.
The real question isn’t “Is this normal?”
It’s: “What is your body saying?”
And: “What does it need to restore its natural harmony—even if that path is unconventional?”
Final Thought
Normality is not sameness. It's not correctness. It's not health.
It is entirely normal for life to be diverse, asymmetrical, surprising—and for healing to follow its own path. In fact, that may be the most normal thing of all.
Ready to explore what’s true for your body—beyond the numbers?
At The BodyWorx, I don’t treat averages. I work with you—your story, your patterns, your body’s unique intelligence. Whether you feel like you’re “within the norm” or completely outside it, there’s wisdom in what you’re experiencing. Let’s listen to it together.
Book a session or reach out with your questions—
References
Fayaz, A., Croft, P., Langford, R. M., Donaldson, L. J., & Jones, G. T. (2016). Prevalence of chronic pain in the UK: A systematic review and meta-analysis of population studies. BMJ Open, 6(6), e010364. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010364
NHS Digital. (2017). Health Survey for England 2017: Chronic pain in adults. UK Government. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fc8c6b78fa8f547585ed7f3/Chronic_Pain_Report.pdf
Todd, A., Akhter, N., Cairns, J. M., Kasim, A., Walton, N., Ellison, A., Chazot, P., Eldabe, S., & Bambra, C. (2018). The Pain Divide: A cross-sectional analysis of chronic pain prevalence, pain intensity and opioid utilisation in England. BMJ Open, 8(7), e023391. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023391