One Reason Humans Exist

Humans would not exist if it weren’t for one remarkable ability: the ability of women to forget.

Forget how painful childbirth was the first time.

Think about it. If every mother could perfectly remember every second of the pain, discomfort, and suffering of her first delivery, how many would willingly sign up for a second? Probably not enough to replace ourselves.

I believe nature solved this problem a long time ago. As the pain fades, the memory of the pain fades with it. Whether this mechanism evolved specifically for childbirth or not, it reveals something profound about human nature.

We are designed to move forward. We are designed to forget suffering.

And while that may be one reason humanity exists today, it creates an entirely different problem when we’re trying to evaluate our health.

At Resona Health, we see this phenomenon all the time. People forget how bad they felt just 30 days ago.

In our PTSD studies using the VIBE PEMF device, it is not uncommon for a participant to tell us:

“Yeah, I’m not really sure it helped.”

Then we show them their own results.

We’ve seen this happen over and over again. Participants who once scored in the 60s and 70s on the PCL-5 later score in the teens, yet still tell us they’re not sure anything changed. The PCL-5 is the gold-standard PTSD assessment used throughout the world, including by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. A score above 33 generally indicates significant PTSD symptoms.

Yet after experiencing these kinds of improvements, some participants genuinely struggle to remember how difficult life was before.

It’s not dishonesty.

It’s not denial.

It’s simply human nature.

The suffering became less intense. Life became more normal. And the old reality faded into the background.

I’ve talked with physicians, psychiatrists, and healthcare professionals about this phenomenon, and nearly all of them report seeing it regularly.

One of my childhood friends is a chiropractor. He has watched patients arrive at his office using a walker. A few weeks later they come in with a cane. Then eventually they walk in under their own power with a lap dog.

Sometimes he’ll point out their progress and they’ll respond, “I could always do this.”

No, you couldn’t.

A month ago you couldn’t walk across the room without assistance. But now that you’ve improved, your brain has already adjusted to the new normal. The old normal has been forgotten.

We see the same thing with some of our customers. Occasionally someone returns a product because they don’t think it helped much. Then a month later they buy it again because after they stop using it, they realize just how much better they felt when they were using it.

For many people, wellness technologies help them improve and then move on. They don’t need ongoing support forever. But for some people, maintenance matters.

The challenge is that memory is often a poor measuring device. Humans are excellent at adapting. That’s one of our greatest strengths. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the reasons we struggle to recognize our own progress.

That’s why objective measurements matter. Data doesn’t forget. Biomarkers don’t forget. Sleep scores don’t forget. Heart rate variability doesn’t forget. Activity levels don’t forget. Unlike memory, they don’t rewrite history.

At Resona Health, we encourage people to track measurable outcomes whenever possible. Whether it’s a Kario watch, symptom surveys, sleep data, activity levels, or other biomarkers, objective measurements often reveal improvements that memory overlooks.

But there may be an even better test. Ask the people around you. Ask your spouse. Ask your children. Ask your friends. Ask your coworkers. Are you more active? Less irritable? More engaged? More pleasant to be around?

The people who see us every day often notice changes long before we do.

The bottom line is simple: don’t rely on memory alone.

Human beings are wired to forget pain once it is gone. That’s probably a good thing. It may even be one reason humans exist.

But when it comes to measuring improvements in your health, trust the data, trust the people around you, and trust the evidence of how far you’ve come.

Because sometimes the biggest improvements are the ones we’ve already forgotten.

Mark L. Fox
Resona Health
Founder and CEO