Though pain is one of the issues people have always tried to avoid and get rid of forever, it is still an undividable part of every person’s life. Usually people consider pain as a bunch of extremely unpleasant feelings, but we should not forget that pain is very important factor in our health protective system.

From this point of view, pain is as important for human organism as breathing, though it is undoubtedly much less pleasant. But who said that human life is a pot of honey?

So, if pain is what we cannot avoid, it is better to learn it, to understand its role in our body. Such approach will result in avoiding the situations, causing pain, or in more effective treating this unpleasant sensation.

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines it as an unpleasant experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage to a person’s body. Consequently, pain never appears by its own or without any basic reason. It is like an alarm signal from your home security system, informing you that something bad is going to happen or has already happened.

When the home security alarms, we usually go and check the house perimeter to find the cause of alarm and act adequately to the situation. But when we feel pain, we mostly take painkilling medications at once, which is like switching off the security system of our organism.

It does not mean that we should avoid using pain relievers and wait until the pain disappears, but we should always find the reason of pain and cure the reason.

Pain usually starts with stimulation of certain nerve endings, which happen in case of some physical injury, such as bone break, cut of a skin, thermal or chemical burn, etc. When any of those situations occurs, nerves, located in the area of injury, send signals to brains, informing about the problem and the brains send appropriate commands to muscles and other body organs to minimize the harm from the injury. For example, when we touch something hot and feel pain, we automatically pull the hand off the hot object. That is the example of protective function of pain.

There are different types of pain, defined in medicine. All the pain types are associated with certain diseases, that is why it is very important for a patient to describe his pain to a doctor with maximum care and details about its character, place of localization and, if possible, the events, which caused the appearance of pain. Throbbing, burning, aching or stinging are the most common descriptions of pain.

Besides, pain can be defined as acute and chronic. Acute pain usually does not last long and appears in response to tissues injury, inflammation or certain diseases. It can be easily localized, thus the reason for this pain is usually easily diagnosed and treated.

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Chronic pain is a continuous pain, lasting more than 3 months. It can have different strength from mild to severe. Chronic pain usually accompanies a chronic disease, for example, arthritis. This type of pain is more difficult to treat.

There is also a so called “referred pain”. This is pain which appears not in the place of actual stimulation, but in some other places. For example, some heart diseases may cause pain not in the chest area, but in left shoulder or arm. That is why it is vitally important to consult a doctor if you can not define the reason of pain.

So, we should not be afraid of pain, we should just understand these body signals and treat them correctly. Finally, everyone should always be extremely attentive to the condition of his organism and not wait until the body uses such extreme means as pain to draw a person’s attention to health problems.

Nick

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