Causes of Pain

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Posted By Sanj on July 24, 2010 at 8:02 pm

All physical pain has a direct underlying physical, or “end” cause. For example, migraine headache may be caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain, or backache may be caused by irritation of a nerve. These end causes can result from many different external or internal conditions. For instance, eating a food you are allergic to can lead to the biochemical imbalance in the brain that directly causes the migraine headache. So can changes in altitude, weather, or sleeping patterns, being tired or stressed, or hormonal changes during PMS or menopause.

Conventional treatments work on the end cause only

Conventional treatments focus on counteracting the direct physical cause of pain, or on eliminating the conditions that lead to the direct physical cause. For example, a food allergy to ripe bananas might lead to a serious biochemical imbalance in a common brain hormone, such as serotonin. Conventional treatments might attempt to eliminate allergenic foods, or to administer drugs to counteract the serotonin imbalance. These treatments can help, but it is not always possible to avoid all potential headache producing situations, such as suspect foods or PMS. Some of the drugs used to treat pain are also not as effective as we would like, and they might have unpleasant side effects, such as nausea or drowsiness. Most importantly, the conventional treatments ignore a major factor. There is something else that has a powerful influence on our brain biochemistry, and which thus determines whether the pain will turn into a serious headache such as migraine or cluster, or whether a minor back pain will turn into a disabling spasm.

Pain is a combination of sensation and emotion

The experience of pain has at least two different components. The two main ones are what we call a ‘sensory component’ and an ‘emotional component’.  You can illustrate this by inflicting a small pain on yourself, for example by squeezing one of your fingers in a pair of pliers. Start out gently, and then gradually increase the pressure until it becomes unpleasant. Notice that you feel the pressure first, and then as the pain starts, you want to pull your hand away. There is an important difference between the sensation in your finger, and your desire to pull your hand back. The sensation in your finger is the sensory component of pain. The emotional component is your desire to escape from the sensation, or your fear of not being able to escape. With a more serious injury you could be terrified by the extent of your injury, and you’d want to escape from the whole situation. Recall the last time you were in serious pain – you probably wanted to change the situation and escape from it, and you may have been angry and frustrated at not being able to. It is significant that we use the word ‘pain’ to refer to both physical and emotional pain. With emotional  pain, we are unhappy with a situation such as loss of a loved one, but we are helpless to change it. We feel angry and frustrated that we can’t do anything about the painful situation, and we may be afraid of what will happen in the future. Physical and emotional pain are very similar, because a large part of what we normally think of as physical pain is actually emotional. It is a well-known and true saying that ‘The attempt to escape pain is pain.’ 

The emotional component of pain can increase the sensory component

The emotional component of pain can affect your body in a way that increases the sensory component. That is, the emotional part can make it hurt worse. Your body undergoes profound physiological changes whenever you attempt to escape from, or fight with anything. These changes have been called the “fight or flight” response, the “stress reaction”, or the “defensive reflex”. These are normal reactions that help us deal with a threatening situation, such as being attacked by a wild animal. They involve the emotions of fear (associated with escape), and anger (associated with fighting). Both of these emotions lead to a flood of different brain chemicals, along with hormonal, blood vessel, and muscular changes. For example, when people get angry, they usually get tight in the chest, their stomach knots up, their muscle tension increases, and their head gets warmer as blood flows away from the extremities and toward the head. The increase in muscle tension alone can cause some very unpleasant side effects, particularly when the tension is centered in the head, neck, back, or buttocks. This tension can cause cramping, changes in blood flow, and nerve irritation. The changes in blood flow can cause their own problems, such as headache and further nerve irritation.

The spiral of agony

An important key to understanding severe pain is that it causes a stress reaction, or defensive reflex. The attempt to fight or to run away from pain is itself unpleasant, and it makes the pain worse. I call this the “spiral of agony”, because the initial pain causes an unpleasant emotional reaction that increases the sensation of pain. The increased sensation of pain causes an increased emotional reaction, which increases the sensation of pain, and so on. Think back to the last time you had a severe headache, back spasm, or other pain. You are probably afraid of this pain recurring, and you might be struggling right now to avoid anything that could bring it on. The unfortunate thing is that this fear and struggling can turn a minor ache into a full blown, disabling bout with severe pain.

The role of attitude in pain

Pain, of all varieties, is much more complex than most people realize. Many people assume that pain is caused only by physical damage to the body, such as cutting, burning, disease, and so on. This is only part of the picture. You might recall a time when a rather small physical injury caused a great deal of pain, for example, getting vaccinated as a child, or when tearing off a Band-Aid. There may be other times when you hardly noticed a more severe injury, such as when you are deeply absorbed playing sports. You may have rubbed yourself raw horseback riding, or you may have played football with a broken bone. The point is that the way we look at the painful experience is at least as important as the amount of physical damage. There is abundant research on this subject. For example, one study examined the amount of pain suffered by soldiers who had the same physical battle wounds, let’s say losing a leg. Soldiers who weren’t committed to the cause of the war reported much more pain than soldiers who believed they were fighting for something honorable and worthwhile. Draftees suffered more than volunteers, and pain was worse when fighting in foreign countries than when defending home soil. This is true for all sorts of pain—your state of mind influences how you experience pain. Even mothers who really want a baby report less pain during childbirth than mothers who are giving birth to unwanted babies.

What you can do about severe pain

Much of the suffering we endure is controlled by mental and emotional factors, for example, our attitude toward the pain, how much attention we pay to it, and how much we attempt to escape from it or struggle with it.  Your mental and emotional state has a profound effect on the physiology of your entire body, and in fact can determine whether you feel pain at all. There are many skills you can learn that will enable you to control your body, and eliminate pain and stress. For example, you can learn to break the spiral of agony by changing the defensive reflex into a state of relaxation and calm abiding.

What Is Chronic Back Pain

Posted In Back Pain Relief | 2 Comments
Posted By linkvine on May 5, 2010 at 12:20 am

If you are experiencing back pain for at least three months now then you suffer from chronic back stiffness.In some cases, chronic back agony may recur after once the difficulty has been resolves. The chances of a chronic back pain repeated alter from one individual to another.

Chronic back pain can be classified into two categories. The first sort of discomfort is caused by identifiable triggers and may include factors such as degenerative disc disease,spinal stenosis, or spondylolisthesis. Alternatively,the second category of chronic pain does not have any identifiable causes and often occurs when the pain sets up a path within the nervous system. The nervous system misinterprets in such conditions and ends up sending inaccurate discomfort signals even when there is no tissue damage. The discomfort here is more of a disease rather then a bi product of an injury.

Chronic pain may be treated by a variety of methods.The 1st line of defence is pain medicines.A category of topical medications known as counterirritants are especially efficacious in relieving pain of a chronic nature. You may apply them on your body in cream or spray form. OTC medicines in particular also help by kick your body’s sensory receptor to cover up or combat chronic pain. Small doses of anti depressants can also help in pain relief including medication such as nortyptiline, amitriptiline, desipramine, doxepin and imipramine which are most effective.

Cold and heat treatments are also better in treating back stiffness. Using cold therapy for back ache is sort of easy and easy.Simply wrap ice in a cloth.Now apply this on the areas in pain. Make sure that you hold on the ice for at least 15 minutes. If you want to use heat care then you can apply a heated pad on the area affected. Or,you can also take a hot water bath. Heat unknots the tissues and provides relief from agony.

Transcutaneous electrical nerve kick,is yet another technique that can help you get rid of back pain.This back pain treatment involves the method of delivering small electric currents through express parts in the nervous system. This electric current mitigates pain by blocking the fibers that carry pain impulses.

Workout as well as appropriate physical therapy can help in combating chronic back pain.Physical therapy encompasses a gamut of exercises including flexing, stretching, endurance, training,strength building aerobics. Your doctor or your physical consultant can design the sessions according to your individual physical needs by assessing the scale of your pain and the factors behind it.

Another technique to get rid of chronic back pain is cognitive behavior care.This therapy helps you work out the unhealthy practices that you have been following and in turn replace them with more positive habits.

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