The stubbed toe ache, the pulled muscle pain, the throbbing pain or bad headache – might have been felt by everyone at some point, but why? The pain response we take for granted is actually a chain reaction that is sophisticated and instantaneous.
For one particular purpose, pain happens to shield you. You usually avoid doing what caused it if your brain registers pain. Pain is a way for the body to let you know that what you do is harmful, and that you need to avoid doing it. Once it is severe, you must take pain management advice from doctors.
The Mechanism of Pain
Pain begins, whether it's your toe or your lower back, at the root of an injury or inflammation. The body's immediate reaction when you hurt yourself is to activate pain receptors, which in turn release chemicals.
These chemicals, which hold a message, go straight to the spinal cord. The spinal cord takes the pain message all the way up to the brain from its receptors, where it is processed by the thalamus and transmitted to the portion of the brain that handles the message, the cerebral cortex.
In other words, the physical message from the injury travels straight to your brain from where you're injured, where the feeling known as pain is registered. Your brain perceives the pain and sends the message of pain back to the part of your body that hurts, and everything goes really fast. You don't stub your toe and realize five minutes later that it hurts; you know right away.
Pain - acute vs. chronic
Two primary types of pain exist: acute or short-term and chronic pain or long-term.
A serious or unexpected pain that recovers within an expected period of time is acute pain. When you have an accident, have surgery, or are ill, you may feel acute pain. When you twist your foot, an example of acute pain is by firing off, the ankle sensory nerves respond, and let the spinal cord know immediately that something is wrong. The message is conveyed to the brain by your spinal cord. Finally, how serious the damage is and what is the next step is determined by the brain. The brain is a big database stored in your life for any event like this, and it returns to other cases after this kind of injury has occurred. Your brain will then determine whether to evoke tears, raise your heart rate, produce adrenaline, or any of a billion other potential reactions.
However, with persistent pain, the original pain receptors constantly send signals after an injury. Chronic pain is a type of pain to last three months or more, or longer than an illness or trauma's anticipated recovery period. A disease or disorder that continually causes harm may cause chronic pain. For instance, the joint is in a disrepair state with arthritis, causing pain signals with little down time to pass to the brain. There is no physical pain cause, but the reaction to pain is the same. In these cases, the cause of chronic pain is difficult to determine and difficult to treat. Ask here at our pain clinic for quick pain healing.
What Can Affect Pain?
The pain response is individual, and what can be painful to one person can only be mildly unpleasant to another. Your perception of pain is influenced not only by physical injury or sensation, but also by emotional, psychological and social influences, as pain signals move through the emotional and thought regions of your brain. You can all relate to how you feel pain through your memories of previous traumatic events, long-term health issues, genetics, coping mechanisms, and approach to pain.
Ask your pain management doctors in OKC at a pain clinic. Only methodical treatment can help in relieving this trouble.
**Disclaimer- Information presented here is not intended to be qualified medical advice. Nothing expressed herein creates a doctor-patient relationship.