Healing Insights

“Pain is a complex, multidimensional perception that varies in quality, strength, duration, location, and unpleasantness. The strength and unpleasantness of pain is neither simply nor directly related to the nature and extent of tissue damage.” PA McGrath, Child Health research Institute, Canada.

“An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. The striking characteristic of this definition is that it does not tie the experience of pain to the stimulus, thus making pain a wholly subjective issue” Robert G Large “Psychological Aspects of Pain,” Annals of the Rheumatic diseases 1996;55;340-345.

Physical Pain

Perceptions of Physical Pain results from a series of exchanges among three major components of your nervous system:

Your peripheral nerves. These nerves extend from your spinal cord to your skin, muscles, bones, joints and internal organs. Some peripheral nerve fibres end with receptors that respond to touch, pressure, vibration, cold and warmth. Other types of nerve fibres end with nocioceptors, which are receptors that detect actual or potential tissue damage.

· Nocioceptors are most concentrated in areas prone to injury, such as your fingers and toes. When nocoiceptors detect a potentially harmful stimulus, such as the hard surface that stubbed your finger, they relay pain messages in the form of electrical impulses along a peripheral nerve to your spinal cord and brain. Sensations of severe pain are transmitted almost instantaneously.

· Your spinal cord. The nerve fibres that transmit pain messages, such as the throbbing pain from that stubbed finger, enter the spinal cord in an area called the dorsal horn. There, they release chemicals called neurotransmitters that activate other nerve cells in the spinal cord, which process the information and then transmit it up to the brain along the spinal cord.

· Your brain. When news of your stubbed finger travels up the spinal cord, it arrives at the thalamus which could be defined as a sorting and switching station deep inside your brain. The thalamus forwards the message simultaneously to three specialized regions of the brain: the physical sensation region that identifies and localizes the pain called the somatosensory cortex, the emotional feeling region that experiences suffering called the limbic system, and the cognitive thinking region that assigns meaning to the pain called frontal cortex. Your brain can respond to pain by sending messages to the spinal cord that modulate the incoming pain signals. These signals can have an excitory or an inhibitory effect.

The “Pain Gate” theory.

Pain messages don't travel directly from your pain receptors to your brain. When pain messages reach your spinal cord, they meet up with specialized nerve cells that act as gatekeepers, which filter the pain messages on their way to your brain. For severe pain messages that are linked to bodily harm, such as when you touch something hot, the "gate" is wide open, and the messages take a faster route directly to your brain. Weaker pain messages, however, may be modified or blocked out by the gate.

Nerve fibres that transmit touch also affect gatekeeper cells. This explains why rubbing a sore area, such as the site of a stubbed finger, makes it feel better. The signals of touch from the rubbing actually decrease the transmission of pain signals. This takes us into areas of self healing that have yet to be fully explained by scientific perceptions of pain management.

· Messages can change within your peripheral nerves and spinal cord. Nerve cells in your spinal cord may release chemicals that intensify the pain, increasing the strength of the pain signal that reaches your brain. This is called the wind-up process or sensitization. At the same time, inflammation at the site of injury may add to your pain.

· Messages from your brain also affect the gate. Rather than just reacting to pain, your brain actually sends messages that influence your perception of pain. Your brain may signal nerve cells to release natural painkillers, such as endorphins or encephalins, which diminish the pain messages.

This last idea explains how your brain, and its psychological and emotional processes, can affect your experience of pain. In fact, how you interpret pain messages and tolerate pain can be affected by a whole multitude of others aspects including:

· Emotional and psychological state such as stress and anxiety.

· Memories of past pain experiences and external reactions to it.

· Upbringing around the emotional management of pain.

· Age

· Sex

· Beliefs and values

· Social and cultural influences

· Attitude

· Expectations of pain management and professionals.

For example, a minor sensation that would barely register as pain, such as a dentist's probe, can actually produce exaggerated pain for a child who's never been to the dentist and who has heard horror stories about what it's like. Fear and anxiety often increase the intensity of the pain experience.

But your emotional state can also work in your favor. Athletes can condition themselves to endure pain that would incapacitate others. And, if you were raised in a home or culture that taught you to "Grin and bear it" you may experience less discomfort than such people who focus on their pain or who are more prone to complain about their level of pain they are experiencing.

How you feel chronic pain

When pain persists longer than expected, it can become a chronic condition, in other words, it becomes an illness unto itself. Pain is generally described as chronic when it lasts six months or longer and can huge impacts on how you function in life.

Sometimes, chronic pain is due to a chronic condition, such as arthritis, which produces painful inflammation in your joints. This type of pain will frequently alter muscle dynamics caused by muscle activity inhibition processes and this itself will then create muscular pain on top of the pre-existing joint pain. Chronic pain may also stem from damage to a peripheral or spinal nerve. This type of nerve pain is called neuropathic pain — meaning the damaged nerve, not the original injury, is causing the pain.

Nerve damage can result from:

· Accidents

· Infections

· Surgery

Occasionally, the cause of chronic pain isn't well understood. There may be no evidence of disease or damage to tissues that doctors can directly link to pain. Or pain may remain after the original injury shows every indication of being healed.

If you have a mood disorder such as depression or anxiety, you're more likely to experience chronic pain, and to feel it more intensely, than do people without a mood disorder. Treating mental health conditions can improve or even eliminate chronic pain.

Relaxation and hypnotherapy can also be advantageous in the management of pain.

It is useful to remember that Chakras are directly related to organs within the body and run along and through the spinal cord directly through and encorporating brain tissue. Cognitive reactions to pain are likely to have an effect throughout the Energetic Chakra System which also extend into the Meridian systems used in Acupuncture.