Understanding Pain For Effective Pain Management.

“What is pain?” My friend repeated my question quizzically! I put forward the same question to all of my friends to find out what would be people’s reaction and their comprehension of pain. The only conclusion I derived was that pain was a pretty subjective topic. Also, the way different people perceived pain was based on each individual’s personal experience with pain. It was not possible for me to come to an exact definition of pain. For some, it was suffering, others considered it as mere discomfort. For some others, it meant an unpleasant sensation. Some associate it with a physical component, while for others, it bears an emotional component. In broad terms, pain can be defined as an unpleasant sensation of either physical or emotional origin.

So, where does pain begin?

It all starts with a peripheral sensation, which stimulates or triggers the pain receptors. These pain receptors are scattered abundantly in our body. They transmit the pain impulses through nerve fibers via the spinal cord, and finally, it reaches the brain. The stimulus is further interpreted in the brain after which we perceive it as pain.

So, why do we feel pain? Can pain be good?

In a way, yes! It is good to be able to perceive pain. Our body uses pain as a medium to convey us that something is wrong and we better fix it. From a clinical point of view, we classify pain as acute and chronic.
Acute pain happens suddenly and sharply. It is a direct response of our body to injury, disease, or inflammation. When the damage or injury subsides, so does the acute pain.

However, chronic pain lasts for a longer duration, generally beyond six months. So, while acute pain is a protective mechanism that alerts our body about injury, chronic pain is different and persistent. Pain signals continually keep firing away in the nervous system. Commonly, chronic pain is seen in case of backache, headache, arthritis, and cancer. It can be neurogenic due to damage to nerves or may be even psychogenic.

Based on the origin, we can also classify pain as somatic, visceral, or neuropathic. All the three types of pain can be either acute or chronic.
Somatic has its origin in the surface tissues (skin) as is in the case of surgical incisions or in the deeper tissues (muscles and bone), like in the TB of bone. Visceral pain, as the name suggests, occurs in the organs of the body, such as in the stomach due to gastritis or pancreas due to Pancreatitis. Neuropathic pain occurs as a result of injury to the nerves. For instance, the pain caused in case of a tumor compressing the nervous tissues would be classified as neuropathic pain.

The best way to deal with pain is through an effective pain management program. Effective pain management can help lessen pain and make day to day functioning easier. It is crucial to know what kind of pain you suffer from in order to get to the root and find ways for efficient pain relief.

By: Saeed Talley

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