Pain - What Do We Know About It?

What is pain?

Your brain and scientist alike are both as clueless about it as they were hundreds of years ago. MedicineNet.com defines pain as: An unpleasant sensation that can range from mild, localized discomfort to agony. It goes further to say that it can be both emotional and physical. It can be either caused by damage to localized tissue like the knee or even the nerves themselves can or may have been damaged either physically or due to some other chemical process in the body.

Scientists don't know what pain is.

Yes, I have just given you a definition of pain above and here I come telling you the people who are supposed to know something about it don't know anything... Yes, they don't. The study of pain has been a long one that has lasted for centuries, for as long as there have been doctors and priests to perform pain relieving rituals. So much money has been poured into research on different continents of the world. " We have found that there are huge gaps in our knowledge base," a scientist, Dr. Matthew J. Blair assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine said about pain.

Even your brain doesn't know it.

How can this one be, considering that it is with our brains that we know we are feeling pain? Well, in as much as it is the brain that tells us that we are feeling pain, it is numb to pain and does not feel it. According to Brainline, there are no pain receptors in the brain, so, as much as the brain can process pain as an impulse from its nervous system, it cannot feel it. The part that feels pain is the part that covers the brain called the meninges. That is why brain surgeries are performed while the person is awake without anesthesia to the brain as the surgeon needs to stimulate different parts of the brain while he works so he knows what he is doing.

Women are not just sensitive to pain, they have more tolerance to it.

This fact about pain is a no-brainer, it is common knowledge that women can bear more pain than their male counterparts and part of the reason why this is so is that of the hormones. Research has shown that those going through menstruation are more affected and sensitive to pain than they otherwise would be on a normal day and this is believed to be due to the level of estrogen around this time. Estrogen is higher during menstruation. On the other hand, progesterone, the hormone that acts opposite to estrogen has been shown to do the opposite; increase pain tolerance said a paper by The Journal of Pain, Issue 4, April 2018.

Sex and exercise can relieve pain naturally.

Patients with migraine headaches, the worst form of headaches one can suffer from have shown to have had pain relief after 'love making'. Exercise doesn't fall behind on this as it has been shown to aid in relieving chronic or persistent pain. This is believed to be due to the chemicals the brain releases both after sex and exercise called endorphins. Endorphins stands for endogenous morphine or put simply; morphine produced in the body. This is also known as the 'feel good' chemical. It has been documented as part of the body's reward system and also has pain relief effects. Which is why doctors advise patients to take up an exercise plan to help aid with healing and pain and prescribe acute migraine sufferers with Morphine (an exogenous form).

In conclusion...

Pain has been around for as long as man has been on the planet. Pain relief remedies and tips are not within the scope of this article but will be discussed in those following. We have discussed above that although we don't know as much as we thought we did about pain, the body seems to be equipped with ways to deal with it and to naturally relief it. Pain is not a disease but the bodies indicator of the possibility of something wrong that needs fixing. If you or someone you know is in pain, please seek medical assistance from a qualified medical doctor, what is shared in this article are suggestions and are by no means intended to replace doctors consultation and prescriptions.