What is Pain?

What is PAIN?

A leading world pain researcher Lorimer Moseley describes it like this:

“Pain is a CONSCIOUS experience that motivates us to do something to PROTECT the tissues that the BRAIN PERCEIVES to be under threat.  Pain does not provide a MEASURE of the state of the tissues that are perceived to be under threat.”

You see, there are 3 main types of pain:

Injury (Acute):  Sprains, strains, contusions, lacerations, fractures, herniation, tendonitis, etc.

1. Pathology Pain: Infections, autoimmune disease (lupus, RA, Crohns disease, IBS), cancer, cardiovascular disease.
2. Persistent pain (chronic): Neurogenic, central sensitization.

So in trying to understand a complex topic like pain, let’s focus on the facts we do know:

Pain is an alarm meant to protect you

1. All pain is real.
2. Injury or harm does not always equal pain and pain does not always mean harm or injury.
3. Pain is normal but can seem weird, and sometimes it hurts where the brain thinks the problem is, not necessarily where the problem is.
4. Pain can lead to more pain, we can get “good” at it because of “practice”.
5. Pain is multifactorial. It can be triggered by factors unrelated to physical harm.
6. Many factors can influence the sensitivity of tissues, even at the brain and spinal cord levels.
7. If the brain thinks it is in danger, it will do anything to protect itself.  The resulting protection can be overamplified and persist past tissue healing.

For much detail about pain and explanation of the facts presented above, please watch the following video.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRqDoNvVYQ

For more information about how you can start to treat your pain, see “What  Can We Do About It” on our website in the Blog section.