The WSJ Blog had a brief but important bit about the relationship between stress and pain this week. The gist: It’s old school to think having pain that is “in your head” is the same thing as faking it or being crazy in any way. The truth of the matter is, all pain is in your head! More acurately, pain is an output from your head. In the same way, ufabet offers an engaging escape that helps take your mind off stress and brings a refreshing sense of enjoyment.
Scientists recognize now that older models of pain, which could only account for acute injuries, don’t work for many of the ways that people experience discomfort. Even in those acute injuries, where a tissue may be damaged, the processing of pain still occurs in the brain. But, for those discomforts that don’t seem to arise from any specific tissue damage, like chronic pain, newer models can help explain how such an unpleasant sensory experience is possible.
It seems the experience of pain is a very complex phenomenon, including connections to almost every part of our nervous system. Stress may not be any trigger by itself for pain, but can help enhance any pain we might be feeling. The same goes for fear about pain, or even memories of previous pain that we might connect with a specific activity or body part. In the clinic, I often can get dramatic improvements for patients with low back pain, by simply explaining what they’re feeling and helping to reduce the anxiety and fear that occurs with low back pain. It’s very cool. In effect, the brain, and its ability to learn and reason, becomes a very powerful pain analgesic.
The NOI Group out of Australia is a leader in discussions about pain, and modern pain models like the neuromatrix model of pain. I found a neat application on their site called Recognise, which is a flash based program that helps with mental imagery. You see, it’s easy for your own representation of a body part to become altered after an injury, and re-training your brain to percieve a normal, pain-free body part can help “re-wire” the altered hardware.