Why do we suffer pain?

When you were a child and got a cut or burn and ran to your mother crying your eyes out, did she tell you it wasn't that bad and that it was all in your head? Well, it turns out that she was right. Pain is an illusion, a biological process that protects us from harm.

Pain is defined as an unpleasant feeling caused by intense or damaging stimuli. Ouch! Pain is an illusion because it involves the brain. Damaging heat, cold, pressure, tearing, and disruption stimulates sensory nerve cells in the skin and around organs. These sensors send out a signal along nerves that attach to the spinal cord and run up the to the brain, specifically to the insular cortex where the signal is distinguished as true pain and not something like and itch or nausea. If it is true damaging pain, a signal is sent back to cause a reaction such as pull your hand out of the fire dumb ass! Just kidding! Actually, the reaction is a signal to cause your muscles to react and pull the hand out of the fire automatically.

The bottom line here is that the pain is controlled in the brain. You feel it at the point of the stimuli because the brain makes you think that it's there. The damage certainly is, but you can see why the brain is involved. For one thing, it has to decide what to do automatically and as quickly as possible. If it waited on you to react it would be too late.

Some proof of this idea is what is called 'Phantom limb' syndrome. This is the feeling that an amputee gets in the limb that they no longer have. Often times, they feel pain. Some scientists believe that this is the brain sending false signals. However, there is a lot of debate on this issue.

The best reason for pain to reside in the brain is so the brain can be altered chemically to interfere with the pain signal. This is where painkillers come into play. The druggists (apothecaries if your from the UK) call this class of drug an Analgesic.

There are three main types of analgesic: NSAID's, COX-2 inhibitors and Opioids. There are some minor ones, but we'll concentrate on the big boys.

NSAID's are Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Aspirin is one of the most widely used in this category and it's been around for a long time. Aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid, does all sorts of things besides relieving pain. It's used to stop a headache, inflammation, and prevent heart attacks and stokes by interfering with clouting. The main thing that NSAID's do is to repress the production of prostaglandins, hormone-like lipids that work by inhibiting cyclooxygenases or COX, a big word for an enzyme that helps make prostaglandins. What it means is that this hormone-lipid prostaglandin is stopped from producing swelling and its associated pain.

COX-2 inhibitors stop the second version of the cyclooxygenase enzyme that the NSAID's inhibit. This type of drug has an added risk of causing heart trouble and stroke.

Opioids like Morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and pethidine deliver an analgesic effect but do it by influencing the cerebral opioid receptor system and the activity of serotonin in the brain. In other words they make you feel real good and forget your pain, and that's why these types of pain relief drugs are addictive and subsequently abused. Opioids are very similar to Heroin, which like them comes from opium.

The main thing to remember is that pain is the body's way of informing us that something is wrong and that we should have it looked into. Simply masking the pain could lead to fatal results. So, don't get mad, get glad with something like aspirin or ibuprofen if you can.

Thanks for reading.