Pain, as defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), is an “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.”
For all of us, pain is a subjective and personal experience. We all respond and cope with it differently. One of the hardest questions patients find we ask is rate your pain out of ten. This is because we all view our pain differently and how we compare it to other emotional and physical experiences contributes to it.
What happens when I feel pain?
When the perception of pain is felt, signals from the injury sight travel to the brain where it is processed and a response is triggered. You can think of this as a fight or flight reaction, and the body releases its natural pain killers. This process of releasing our natural pain relief works to inhibit the signals sent to the brain to reduce overdrive of our pain experience.
What other factors can contribute to Pain?
Pain isn’t just a physical experience, it is also mental, emotional and social. Think about when you have been overly stressed, not had enough sleep, or have been fearful of your pain. Did you notice if your pain felt worse and wore you down? Did you avoid going out for that meal with friends because you didn’t think your pain would behave?
How we think and interpret our pain can contribute to a mismatch of our body’s chemicals (remember those natural pain killers mentioned earlier) and can affect our sensitivity to our pain experience. This is why pain is more than just a muscle strain, nerve, or ligament damage. If we are stressed, lack sleep, or avoid activities we enjoy (to name a few) – our pain experiences can be altered!
This is why your physiotherapist will ask what you do for work, what you enjoy doing for exercise, how your sleep is, and what areas might aggravate and ease your pain. You may wonder why this is, but now we know that pain is more than just a physical experience, it is our job to work with you to reduced your pain levels, which will in turn benefit many areas in your life that may be affected.
Check out Figure 1 to give you an idea of pain and its complex relationship with other factors in our lives!
