UNDERSTANDING PAIN: Part 1 – Pain and the brain
Scientific research has shown that one of the most important factors in overcoming persistent pain is understanding the biology of pain.
With that in mind, I’m going to send you 4 articles (one each week for the next 4 weeks) exploring this fascinating topic!
This article includes a basic outline of pain science.
Next week’s article will outline exactly what goes wrong in the different parts of the body and nervous system when pain becomes chronic and persistent.
Article 3 will demonstrate an example of a normal vs an abnormal pain response in 2 different people.
In the final article I will outline the best strategies for overcoming chronic pain.
Pain and the brain
Once upon a time, scientists believed pain was a message sent from our body to our brain informing us that damage had occurred. What we have now discovered is that these early scientists had it the wrong way around. Pain occurs in the brain.
Pain doesn’t actually tell you about how much you have damaged your body; it tells you about how much danger your brain believes you are in. This may be potential danger or real danger.
Pain doesn’t equal damage
Think about the last time you stubbed your toe… it’s excruciating! Even though the amount of tissue damage is small, the pain response is often big. Now, if you were a professional runner and you did this, the pain would be much greater because of the perceived threat to your livelihood, especially just before a big race. If last time you stubbed your toe, you fractured the bone and were on crutches, you would feel even more pain this time because of the memory of your past experience.
On the flip side, if you stubbed your toe with the exact same force whilst running away from an aggressive dog, you probably wouldn’t feel any pain in your toe at all, because the brain has more important things to worry about.
As you can see, there are many factors involved in pain, such as context (how could this injury affect my livelihood?), environment (am I being chased by something that could kill me?), past experience (what happened last time?) and your current emotional state.
Persistent pain
When you sustain an injury, you experience pain to alert you to the fact you have done something to your body. This initial pain can be severe and it’s a clever way of your brain telling you to protect the area so it can heal.
During the first few days after an injury (called the acute stage), inflammation occurs, which is the body initiating its healing response. After these first few days, inflammation subsides and the pain plateaus and then gradually reduces over time.
How long this takes is based on the severity of the injury and which tissues are involved (bone, for example, takes longer than muscle tissue).
Unfortunately, the brain and body aren’t perfect and sometimes things can go wrong. If pain persists beyond normal healing timeframes, it is called chronic pain.
In the next article, I’ll outline exactly what goes wrong in the different parts of the body and nervous system when pain becomes chronic and persistent.
Article 3 will demonstrate an example of a normal vs an abnormal pain response in 2 different people.
In the final article I will outline the best strategies for overcoming chronic pain.
Stay tuned :)
