Pain pathways

Never ignore pain. It is a sign that something is harming you. The cause may be an external injury, such as a burn, or internal damage or disease. Once you know the source of the pain, you can often use natural remedies to ease the discomfort, while seeking medical advice, if necessary, to address the underlying cause.

Published Jan 18, 2022

  • Pain pathways:

    The mechanisms enabling us to sense pain are complex. What you feel depends on many factors, including how active you are and whether or not you are already feeling stressed.

  • Painful massages:

    Skin receptors report a painful stimulus by sending electrical messages along sensory nerve fibers to the spinal cord. From there they travel to the brain, where the signals are interpreted as the sensation of pain. Sometimes you can feel pain in one part of the body even though the area affected is actually elsewhere. This is called referred pain, and one example is angina pain originating from oxygen starvation of the heart muscle but felt in the upper arm, shoulder and neck.

  • Natural painkillers:

    At times of acute stress, the brain produces chemicals called endorphins. These reduce the perception of pain by blocking the action of the chemical messengers that transmit pain signals between nerve cells.

  • The ‘gate control’ theory:

    Pain may be partly or completely blocked by a process known as ‘gate control’. Nerve messages carrying information from the skin about other sensations can sometimes bar the transmission of pain messages. This happens when nerve fibers that are carrying ‘non pain’ messages prevent nerve fibers that are carrying pain messages from relaying these signals up the spinal cord. It explains why therapies involving touch, pressure, heat and cold can relieve pain.

  • The perception of pain:

    Everyone’s pain threshold (the point at which a stimulus becomes painful) is the same, but each person’s tolerance of pain varies. What seems a minor discomfort to one person may be experienced as troublesome or even agonizing, by another. People’s responses also vary; someone who has been brought up to suffer in silence will probably admit to less pain than someone from a background in which expressing feelings freely is accepted behavior.

  • Relaxation:

    Counter the muscle tension that can exacerbate chronic pain by learning some relaxation techniques. A number of different approaches are available to you. Relaxation classes and cassettes, breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, visualization and self-hypnosis can all help. Massage and aromatherapy are good for relaxing tense muscles; if you can’t consult a professional, ask a friend or relative if he or she would be willing to learn the basic techniques.

  • Exercise

    A daily half hour brisk exercise raises your body’s levels of endorphins for several hours. To spread the effects of a raised endorphin level over a longer period, try exercising for 20 minutes in the morning and then for another 20 minutes in the late afternoon. To lessen localized pain, exercise the affected part to increase local circulation. For example, gently bending and stretching a knee that is painful because of arthritis can assist the removal of inflammation-producing chemicals in the bloodstream.

  • Stress and pain:

    Whereas acute stress resulting from trauma may temporarily block pain, chronic physical or emotional stress can cause pain and lowering your tolerance to pain, stress makes existing discomfort worse. For example, if you are worried that pain results from a serious disease, it may be hard to bear, but once you know that this is not the case, you may find the pain much more tolerable. Long-term stress also causes physical tension, which makes you prone to headaches and minor injuries, such as strained muscles.

  • When to get medical help:

    You do not know the cause of the pain. The pain continues despite home treatment. You have swelling or redness at the site of the pain, breathlessness, fever or difficulty moving the affected part.<br /> <br /> Get a help right away:<br /> <br /> You have severe pain of any kind. The pain is associated with numbness, tingling or muscle weakness.

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