What is the Nature of Pain and How to Fight it?

NEW YORK - July 3, 2019 - PRLog -- There are different ways to fight physical pain without medications. Some methods are based on physiological characteristics, others - on psychological and emotional factors.

Physical pain is something that people regularly experience throughout their lives. But does pain depend only on physical factors? Indeed, sometimes people react at the same stimuli in different ways. It turns out that people's attitudes and emotions are also essential. How to fight them and what to change to increase the pain threshold?

Despite the hothouse conditions, we still feel pain every day. Pain can be pleasant in two cases: due to psychological disorders and if the pain is associated with any pleasant event. But in general, pain perceived as a sharply negative feeling. Fortunately, there are ways that can help reduce pain without any medications and injections, but first, you need to understand the nature of pain.

Nature of pain

There are nerve endings on our skin and surfaces of internal organs. They are necessary for us to assess the damage of the body. There are especially a lot of nerve endings located on the eye cornea and the pulp of teeth, that's why when your teeth hurt (https://www.broadwayfamilydentalpc.com/tooth-pain-after-f...) you feel unbearable pain.

There is a type of pain that is not felt in a particular part of the body, it spreads over a wide area. Such pain is called prothopatic, and it usually occurs in acute injuries or severe organ damage. However, protopathic pain is not the only type of pain. There is also an epicritical pain, which is necessary to quickly convey accurate information about the size of the damage. This pain is not particularly severe.

1. Fighting fire with fire

It sounds strange, but it turns out that a slight pain can help to fight severe pain. This feature was used two centuries ago. Dental assistants were pinching the patient during tooth extraction and therefore distracted the patient from the main severe pain. The fact is that epicritical pain is able to suppress the protopathic pain.

Experiments of neurophysiologists have confirmed that epicritical pain inhibits the excitation of nerve cells which is caused by protopathic, severe pain. As a result, protopathic pain doesn't reach the brain, that's why a person doesn't feel severe pain. These experiments may explain the fact that when a person experiences severe pain, for example, due to serious injury, he/she bites the lips or digs the nails into the hand.

2. Mood

The mood of a person that accompanies the pain is no less important. This statement can be confirmed by the research of doctor H. Beecher, who observed the pain perceived by wounded soldiers during the Second World War.

The doctor noticed that the wounded soldiers needed less morphine to relieve pain than people in peacetime after surgery. Beecher attributed this to the emotional state of the person: the soldiers were happy that they've survived, while people after surgery, as a rule, are pessimistic and easily depressed. Thus, a positive attitude is essential to the perception of pain.

3. Auto-suggestion and attitude

A large number of experiments prove that the psychological state of a person greatly affects the sensation of pain. Athletes often don't feel pain during competitions, because all their attention is focused on achieving the highest goal - victory.

One study by scientists from the University of Oxford once again proves the importance of psychological factors. The experiment involved 12 students, among whom were Catholics, atheists, and agnostics. During the experiment, the participants were shown two pictures: "Lady with an Ermine" and "Madonna", written by Sassoferrato, a painter of the 17th century. After showing the picture, the scientists gave electrical shocks.

After the experiment, religious students, after looking at the picture of Madonna, felt less pain from an electrical shock than agnostics and atheists. At the same time, after looking at "Ladies with an Ermine", all participants felt the same level of pain.

Thus, the mental state of religious people who looked at the image of their religion has changed, which allowed them to feel less pain. The author of the experiment noted that the same condition can be achieved through meditation. So, any psychological attitude aimed at suppressing pain really suppresses it.

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