All pain is real.
No-one really wants pain. This is understandable. Though pain is unpleasant, it is important for our survival. Normally, pain experiences are excellent response to what the brain judges to be a threatening situation. This is our normal damage early warning system...
This system has very specialized sensors. Some respond to mechanical force (intense pressure or squeezing), temperature changes (hot or cold), and chemical changes (allergens or chemical released by cells). These sensors, along with the sensors in the eyes (light), ears (sound and gravity) and nose (smell), are the first line of protection against potential harm.
Alarm system: Black Jack, Shutterstock.com
Smoke detector: via Wikimedia Commons
IP Camera: Intellinet Network Solutions, Wikimedia Commons
Fire alarm pull station: KMJ, Wikimedia Commons
The information provided by this sensor carried back to the brain by special neurons is just a surge of electric impulse. The emission of barrages of signals that does not mean pain will occur.
Data filter: phipatbig, Shutterstock.com
The signal can also be nullified at the spinal cord if
By getting rid of the "noise," the filter system provides the brain with a clear picture of what is really happening in the tissues.
Nerve impulse: Chris 73, Diberri, tiZom, Wikimedia Commons
Scriptwriting: Wikimedia Commons
At the judgement, the brain constructs a sensible story based on the information presented and in reference to its database of acquired and inherited experiences. The condemned dangers set off alarm bells, and the innocents cause no pain.
Emotions, like fear, anger and sad, affect the intensity of the story like megaphone amplifying sound. Nevertheless, a believable script can be written even without any input of damage signals, but just with thoughts.
Phone icons: alexwhite, Shutterstock.com
All emergency response systems are always on alert, and react according to the scenario.
The immediate response team members are:
The recovery operation team members are:
If the story has nothing exciting, life goes on as usual. If there is a horrible scenario, siren is sounded and pain sets in. The sensation like “aching,” “tearing,” “stretching,” “burning” are created relevant to the context of the story. The amount of pain one experiences does not necessarily relate to the amount of tissue damage.
This is how we dramatize the story.
Sirens: Grimgram, Shutterstock.com
If pain were a fire alarm, nociceptive pain would be triggered only by intense heat, inflammatory pain would be activated by warmth, and pathological pain would be a false alarm caused by malfunction of the system itself.
Pain hypersensitivity can either be adaptive or maladaptive. After an injury it helps by warning us from moving or touching the injured tissue until repair is complete. However, if it persists long after an injury has healed or occurs in the absence of any injury, it provides us with no benefits, and is a manifestation of pathological change in the nervous system.
The two mechanisms that increase the excitability and sensitivity of neurons are:
This pain production model elucidates the role of CNS in abnormal pain sensation and chronic pain syndrome. It also indicates how the nociceptive pathways in addition to causing pain, can influence the whole body through its effect on autonomic, endocrine, immune and motor systems. Thus, when this pathway is not functioning properly, it will cause health problems in other systems of the body.