All of us have experienced pain at some point in our lives. While it’s a horrible experience, it’s an inevitable part of being human. But what exactly is pain?
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) describe pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. It’s interesting to note in the definition that pain is not only a physical experience, but also an emotional or psychological experience, and also that it doesn’t even have to involve actual tissue damage.
Pain is an alarm system, designed to alert you that there may be something wrong. It’s a very sophisticated system which relies on regular feedback from all parts of the body. The control centre of this alarm system, the brain, makes a judgement based on all the information received, whether or not it thinks that you need protecting. When your brain concludes that it has received enough information advising that you should be protected, then you will experience pain (whether or not you have actual damage). The experience of pain gets our attention and motivates us to take action eg. stop walking on a sprained ankle for a short time.
A key part of this alarm system is context – sometimes eg. if you’re running away from a bear in the woods and you trip over and roll your ankle, quite possibly you may not experience pain at the time as your brain will likely advise that now is not the best time to stop walking. But you can also have pain but no tissue damage. A number of years ago, a builder in the UK accidentally shot his nailgun down through the middle of his work boot. He had immediate pain and naturally started to panic. At the hospital he needed sedatives to help calm him down. The xrays interestingly revealed that the nail went between his toes and didn’t pierce the skin at all. Just the thought that his foot was likely to be injured was enough for his brain to conclude that he needed protecting.
Another way to think about it is that if two people sustain the exact same injury, with the exact same amount of tissue damage, they might experience totally different levels of pain to each other. This is because there are variables such as fear, past experiences with pain, immediate danger, cultural backgrounds (eg stoicism), etc.. that can affect pain levels.
One of the interesting things about alarms is that they don’t necessarily tell us what is wrong, they simply get our attention and motivate us to check for threats to our body. If you’re having trouble figuring out your pain, give us a call at Ahead Physiotherapy on 5437 8899. Look out for our PART 2 blog coming soon…