by Matilda Atkins
There are many different types of pain, but they can be split roughly into physical and emotional pain. These two sections are interlinked more than most people realise. All pain is produced by the brain, not by the part of the body that is in danger. There are two types of physical pain, acute and chronic. Acute pain is that which has occurred for a few weeks of months, usually due to tissue damage, and gets better with time. Chronic pain has been occurring for longer than three months. By three months, all the tissue damage has been repaired yet the brain still keeps producing the pain. Your brain is protecting you from something that doesn’t need protection. In Australia one fifth of people have chronic pain.
Pain is a system of protecting you from danger. It is the nervous system sending messages to your brain. However, it is not only the event which is affecting your level of pain, it is also affected by stress and mood; diet and lifestyle; and personal history. Pain from the exact same cause can be different depending on the situation. Referred pain is when your brain sends a pain signal to a different part of your body that the area where the pain stems from. There have been psychological experiments where a person can be convinced to feel pain responses from a prosthetic limb.
When people feel emotional pain, the same areas of the brain get activated as when people feel physical pain. MRI studies show that pain intensity shrinks when the hippocampus reflects patients’ optimism, and other studies have shown that pain damages some sections of the brain in the same way psychological trauma does. If emotional and physical pain are so similar, it follows that emotional pain must have a physical location in the body. But where would that be? Emotional pain provokes physical reaction, for example shouting, hitting someone. Certain pains are also associated with certain feelings, anger creates a tight feeling in your chest, hatred and rage are felt in the gut.
There are statistical connections between mental illness and physical illness. For example, people in insecure relationships are more likely to have cardiovascular problems than those who are more secure. Mental illnesses such as anxiety cause many physical symptoms such as difficulty breathing, heart palpitations and nausea. Having a severe mental illness can reduce life expectancy by ten to twenty years. A study by King’s College London showed that people with severe mental illnesses are at a 53% higher risk for having cardiovascular disease.
It is assumed that pain must have a cause, and that is what doctors and therapists aim to find. They get rid of the cause and the pain goes away. Or if the cause cannot be removed, they find ways of dealing with it. However, when the cause has gone yet the pain remains, this becomes more complicated. In conclusion, physical pain and emotional pain are more interconnected than you might think. The purpose of pain is to protect you from danger and to do this your brain analyses the whole situation including your situation, mood, stress and past.
 |
| (source: Wiki Commons) |
Pain is a system of protecting you from danger. It is the nervous system sending messages to your brain. However, it is not only the event which is affecting your level of pain, it is also affected by stress and mood; diet and lifestyle; and personal history. Pain from the exact same cause can be different depending on the situation. Referred pain is when your brain sends a pain signal to a different part of your body that the area where the pain stems from. There have been psychological experiments where a person can be convinced to feel pain responses from a prosthetic limb.
When people feel emotional pain, the same areas of the brain get activated as when people feel physical pain. MRI studies show that pain intensity shrinks when the hippocampus reflects patients’ optimism, and other studies have shown that pain damages some sections of the brain in the same way psychological trauma does. If emotional and physical pain are so similar, it follows that emotional pain must have a physical location in the body. But where would that be? Emotional pain provokes physical reaction, for example shouting, hitting someone. Certain pains are also associated with certain feelings, anger creates a tight feeling in your chest, hatred and rage are felt in the gut.
There are statistical connections between mental illness and physical illness. For example, people in insecure relationships are more likely to have cardiovascular problems than those who are more secure. Mental illnesses such as anxiety cause many physical symptoms such as difficulty breathing, heart palpitations and nausea. Having a severe mental illness can reduce life expectancy by ten to twenty years. A study by King’s College London showed that people with severe mental illnesses are at a 53% higher risk for having cardiovascular disease.
It is assumed that pain must have a cause, and that is what doctors and therapists aim to find. They get rid of the cause and the pain goes away. Or if the cause cannot be removed, they find ways of dealing with it. However, when the cause has gone yet the pain remains, this becomes more complicated. In conclusion, physical pain and emotional pain are more interconnected than you might think. The purpose of pain is to protect you from danger and to do this your brain analyses the whole situation including your situation, mood, stress and past.
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments with names are more likely to be published.