Broken heart paracetamol: 11 facts about pain
The sensation of pain is not always preceded by physical exposure. - It hurts not only when falling on the asphalt from a bicycle, but also after betrayal or loss of a loved one. Although there is little pleasant in it, pain is an important evolutionary mechanism that protects us from injuries, reinforcing the experience we have experienced as negative. The extreme subjectivity of pain complicates research, but the existing work on the topic is enough to get answers to the main questions. We understand how pain sensitivity works and what scientists say about it.
Text: Marina Levicheva
Why pain occurs
Pain sensations are managed by the nervous system, which consists of the central (brain and spinal cord) and peripheral (sensory and motor nerves). Know exactly what we are interacting with something potentially dangerous, pain receptors - nociceptors help the brain. They are activated every time the tissues are sufficiently compressed. Therefore, pain occurs if you hit the table with your fist, but you do not feel it if you hit the pillow with the same fist.
The response to the danger can be an instant urge to move away from it, for example, to detach a hand from a hot one. This is how reflexes work. However, if the person managed to get burned, the pain will continue. When the signal reaches the brain, it is sent to several different areas in its cortex for interpretation. It turns out where the pain came from, whether it was similar to what the person had experienced before, and if so, what kind of pain this time is better or worse. After this, the limbic system forms its own answer, which is why one pain makes us cry, another - to get angry, and the third - to sweat.
What is the pain
Traditionally, there are two types of pain: nociceptive (the one that is caused by local tissue damage and the effect on pain receptors) and neuropathic (associated with changes in the work of the system that perceives and interprets pain signals). But there is a third type, psychogenic pain, which is sometimes defined as "other." We are talking about sensations that are not associated with pathological processes in the body and are provoked solely by psychological factors.
A curious fact: such a common type of pain as a migraine, still can not classify. While some experts consider it a complex neuropathy, others - something between averages of nociceptive and neuropathic pain. Sometimes pain is also divided into somatic (skin, muscles, bones and joints) and visceral (internal organs). And directly in the diagnosis of pain is defined as acute or chronic.
Why talk about chronic pain so much
Chronic is considered to be pain, which lasts at least 12 weeks. Unlike acute pain, it does not arise as a response to a threat to survival and has no useful purpose at all. In this case, chronic pain is observed in more than one and a half billion people around the world, and women, smokers and people with a weight above the medical norm are at risk.
As for treatment, scientists continue to search for alternatives to opioids, which over time can be addictive and addictive. And there is progress in this issue: the potential is demonstrated, for example, by the impact on certain parts of the brain with the help of electrodes and Botox injection. In addition, there is evidence that with chronic pain, placebo works almost better than real therapy. The problem is that this method seems to be effective only for people with a specific brain structure.
The most common and strongest
The most common are back pain, headaches, joint pain and neuropathic pain (pinching of the sciatic nerve, carpal tunnel syndrome, and some others). Regarding the most severe pain, despite the corresponding reputation, the pain that women experience during childbirth did not fall on the list compiled by the National Health Service of England. The number of “maximally limiting” conditions, along with gout, endometriosis and fibromyalgia, included renal stone disease, bone fractures and appendicitis.
Phantom pains
Patients after amputation of the extremities often report that they continue to feel a lost arm or leg. And they do not just feel her presence, but they face pain that interferes with normal life. Scientists believe that this is due to the non-adaptive plasticity of the brain - a situation where changes in the brain lead to a negative result, a kind of error in the program.
For a long time, there were no effective ways to work with phantom pains, and patients were generally recommended cognitive-behavioral therapy. However, in 2018, Swedish professor Max Ortiz Catalan suggested using virtual reality glasses to relieve the symptoms, taking as a basis the hypothesis that pain in the amputated limb can provoke the remaining neurons that are switched on randomly.
So Catalan and his team created the Phantom Motor Execution (PME) augmented reality system, which captures the electrical signals intended for the missing limb, and then displays a full-fledged picture on the screen. Moreover, the patient does not just see himself on the screen with a hand or foot, but can move it and even move his fingers. It is difficult to say when the system will be widely used, but the test results are promising.
Why does a broken heart really hurt
Visualization of the brain shows that when we look at the photos of our ex-lovers who initiated the break, the same parts of the brain that work when we feel physical pain are activated. This applies not only to romantic relationships, but also to the loss of a friend or even a colleague.
Perhaps the evolutionary human need for social connections has led to the brain not always seeing the difference between physical and emotional pain. This is confirmed by the fact that people who in one of the experiments took paracetamol for several weeks, reported less daily "social pain" than those who did not take it.
Termination of relations with someone whom we trusted and with whom we spent enough time inevitably becomes stressful for us. But stressful overload, doctors remind, for people with poor health can turn into “broken heart syndrome” - quite a physical (and very dangerous) condition with sharp chest pains and breathing difficulties.
How painkillers work
Even Neanderthals used painkillers - they chewed poplar bark containing salicylic acid (a substance related to aspirin). Today, scientists, realizing the need, are working on more and more progressive drugs: for example, painkillers, which will be 100 times stronger than morphine, but eliminate the risk of addiction.
How does the tablet know where it hurts? She does not know (at least at first). Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the most popular class of painkillers, being absorbed into the bloodstream, are sent in search of cyclooxygenase, an enzyme that is released when cells are damaged. By contacting him, the drug reduces the production of inflammatory molecules, prostaglandins, and the pain gradually subsides. In turn, opioids, which are used to treat severe pain, first block the transmission of pain signals to the brain, and then change the interpretation of pain, working directly with neurons.
Strange ways to deal with pain
Experiments show that not only painkillers can cope with minor pain. When consumed in this sense, ginger and turmeric may be effective, and when applied locally - patches and gels with capsaicin, the main component of red pepper.
There is a scientific basis for a child’s habit of holding mom’s hand when they take blood or make an injection. Because of the synchronization of the heart rhythms and the frequency of breathing, the pain really becomes less. And this alternative anesthesia is much less doubtful than beer, which, according to some researchers, can work better than paracetamol.
Pain threshold, pain scale and blood test for pain
People differ not only in their ability to interpret pain, but also in their ability to tolerate it. What we know as a pain threshold is 60% genetically determined. Although the importance here, apparently, are gender, age and lifestyle features. So, babies feel pain four times more than adults, women have more pain than men, and lack of sleep makes everyone more and more susceptible to pain.
The tool by which doctors today assess the severity of a problem is called the scale of pain. But perhaps the methods will soon become more accurate. Trying to make at least some objectivity in the assessment of pain, specialists at Indiana University Medical School found markers in the blood that can indicate how much pain a person is experiencing. In addition to the assessment itself, a blood test for pain will help determine whether the patient is at risk of developing chronic pain.
Is it real not to feel pain at all?
Congenital insensitivity to pain (hereditary sensory-vegetative neuropathy) is the name of a rare genetic condition that deprives a person of the ability to perceive physical pain. But although it may seem like a superpower, people with congenital insensitivity to pain — about a million people around the world — are in fact at risk. It happened, for example, with Stefan Betz, whose insensitivity was diagnosed after he had bitten off a piece of his own language at the age of five. Stefan, like Ashlyn Blocker, has a mutation of the SCN9A gene associated with the transmission of pain signals. The girl immediately got two copies of the damaged gene - one from each of the parents. And the reason for the fact that almost all members of the Italian family Marsilis do not feel pain during fractures, was a mutation of the ZFHX2 gene.
Can I feel the pain of another person
Synesthesia of a mirror touch (or mirror synesthesia) is a special neurological characteristic that makes a person feel physical and / or emotional changes in the body of the person he touches. Dr. Joel Salinas, who decided to use his synesthesia to treat people, admits that it can be quite exhausting. With what the girl with the mirror synesthesia will surely agree, who does not stop laughing when someone is tickled nearby. The mechanism of mirror synesthesia is associated with the increased functionality of mirror neurons, which are usually included in the work when we observe the activity of another person - and research on this phenomenon continues.
PHOTO:Walter Cicchetti - stock.adobe.com, supachai - stock.adobe.com, Elena - stock.adobe.com
