We think we know pain, but do we really?

Pain in our life

Pain is a common companion of various serious as well as minor illnesses. We all know it from our lives and we fear it. But often this is unnecessary because we lack information. We do not understand what pain is about. It is good to know that it is always possible to fight pain effectively, defeat it or reduce it substantially. The following short text will provide some basic information about pain - so that we are able to understand it, tell our doctors the most important information about our pain and learn how to deal with it.

Pain comes into our life and influences it

Pain can significantly influence the quality of our life. It limits our mobility, causes insomnia, fatigue, nervousness and at the same time depression. Pain can cause us to lose the joy in life, become irritated, difficult. Pain – originally only physical – starts to intervene in all the important areas of our life. It influences our psychology, our social relations (with our family, friends) and behavior; it can even affect us so much that we begin doubting the meaning of everything, the meaning of our existence. If the pain starts controlling us like this, we should not remain alone with it. We should talk to a specialist. It is possible to identify and cure not only the physical pain but also the factors that can be causing its increase.

How pain develops

Pain is a feared signal from our body that is meant is to protect our organism from severe damage. When our tissue is damaged in any way or when a tumor starts growing, the nerve endings are irritated. The pain is transferred from them by the nerves into the cerebral cortex. Every person perceives pain differently; the intensity of pain is hard to measure.

Acute and chronic pain

At the beginning, the pain is useful in fact because it warns us. We realize that we are ill and that we have to seek treatment or possibly only rest. This kind of pain is called acute. But if the cure is not successful and the pain persists (usually more than three months) then we call it chronic. Chronic pain is no longer useful because it lacks the purpose of a warning signal. On the contrary, this kind of pain exhausts the human organism and should be treated by a doctor.

Neuropathic pain

Neuropathic pain is created by damage to our nervous system. Either the peripheral part is damaged (for instance nerves on the hands and legs) or the central part (brain, spinal chord). The reasons may vary: shingles, sciatica, diabetes, conditions after operations and amputations, tumor growth, alcoholism and many others. It can also result from a damaged brain or spinal chord following a stroke or resulting from multiple sclerosis. Neuropathic pain does not have a protective function. But it is not often easy to discover its cause. This is because it has characteristics similar to chronic pain, influences our life in a negative way, and often worsens when psychologically demanding circumstances occur such as fatigue and emotional stress. Similarly to any other pain, neuropathic pain is also very personal and everybody perceives it differently.

See also Medicine for Tumor Pain