Why Do We Have Pain?

A Short, Noncomprehensive Look at Pain

Pain. Everybody has some at once time or another, and most folks would prefer not to have any, ever. There is plenty of medical documentation, some conflicting, about what causes pain and even more argument about what to do about it, but no one with any medical credentials should tell you that pain is all in your head. It may be true, but it's not the whole answer and it can mislead you into thinking you're imagining something to which you should in fact be paying attention.

Pain is perception of pain. There is no such OBJECT as pain and there is no such INJURY as pain, so we cannot speak of healing pain. Wecan relieve pain, but relieving the pain may not be the same as healing whatever is CAUSING the pain, assuming it even needs healing.

Pain is a message that gets sent to the brain through nerve endings, is translated there and gets sent back out in different ways depending on the individual, the source of the pain and all kinds of other stuff. (That is the correct medical term for it: "all kinds of other stuff.")

I have fibromyalgia, which means, among other things, that I have too much Substance P in my spinal fluid. That means when I stub my toe, for example, the message sent to my brain gets mistranslated and sent back out as a BIG pain. Is it a mistake? Should i Ignore it? It's REAL PAIN! Pain is whatever the final result IS! I feel it and it's not in my head; it's real and it hurts.

Pain serves a purpose. The reason we have this complex message system to tell us we hurt is so we can STOP banging our heads against those doors, take our hands back OUT of the fire before they burn, put LESS pressure on that twisted ankle. It's self-preservation. People with fibromyalgia and other kinds of pain-heightening disorders suffer needlessly; the message is ofen a lie. People with diabetes, on the other hand, lose limbs because they can't feel that warning pain and let injuries develop too far.