Physical pain is something that a person experiences regularly throughout his life. But does the sensation of pain really depend only on physical factors? After all, in different situations people react to the same stimulus differently. It turns out that psychological attitudes and emotions also play a huge role. How can you cope with them, and what can you change to increase your pain threshold or not feel pain at all?
The diagnosis is so rare that it may affect only 100 people worldwide, and our understanding of what exactly genes do to us is so new that the definition is a mystery of which we only know parts. Many chronic pain patients wish they could turn the switch that turns off the pain. He didn't have sick behaviors that were holding him back. Without pain everyday life- this is an adventure. This will happen in the morning: Maggie just didn’t wake up. She doesn't hear the alarm because she has lost her hearing in the last few years and takes a hearing aid in the evening.
Despite the greenhouse living conditions, we still feel pain almost every day - a toothache, we hit our finger on the corner of a cabinet, a speck of dust got into our eye with a contact lens. And this is not to mention accidental injuries, like “slipped and broke my arm” and all sorts of illnesses.
Painful sensations can be pleasant, except perhaps in psychological disorders or in cases where they are associated with pleasant events, but in general, pain is perceived as something sharply negative. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce pain without any pills or injections, but first you need to delve into its nature.
Bob remembers the first time he took four-year-old Maggie to the pool. She played enthusiastically in the water, but suddenly "she was rolling around in a fetal position and did not move, as if dead." Bob desperately tried to revive her, holding her, shaking her, massaging her. Fifteen minutes later she opened her eyes and told him that he best father in the world. He had massive hypothermia, but without the usual warning signs. Bob realized, "Until she realizes it's too cold or too hot, it's basically too late."
Tests show that she simply does not feel any difference between 27 and 40 degrees Celsius. Anything hotter than 40 degrees is perceived as warm. Rose, Robert Arlinghaus and others examine these hitherto highly controversial and unanswered questions in 37 pages of Fish and Fisheries. Many various methods, which have been cited in the literature to define pain in fish, are critically reviewed and often exposed as "missionary".
The nature of pain
On skin and surfaces internal organs there are nerve endings that are needed to assess damage to the body. There are especially many of these endings on the cornea of the eye and the pulp of the tooth, so toothache is considered one of the most unbearable.
As a rule, pain is not felt in a specific place, but “spreads” over a wide area. This pain is called protopathic; it often occurs with severe injuries and damage to internal organs.
Many bibliographical references relating to well-being aquatic organisms, are characterized by the following biases: denying negative results, research or interpretation based on faith, establishing hypotheses based on results, and pushing scientific boundaries.
As always, the original article is recommended to interested parties. The nature of pain in humans and implications for pain research in animals. Pain is personal experience! It cannot be directly detected, tested or measured, such as the oxygen content of water. The International Society for Pain Research defines pain as an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential damage, a subjective experience, sometimes even in the absence of actual damage.
However, protopathic pain is not the only type of pain. There is also epicritic, which is necessary to quickly convey the sensation of pain and convey accurate information about the size of the lesion. This pain is not particularly severe.
These varieties provide the first way to get rid of severe pain.
1. Wedge with wedge
It sounds strange, but it turns out that a little pain can help with severe pain. This feature was used two centuries ago, when, during tooth extraction, dental assistants pinched the patient, distracting him from the main severe pain. The whole point is that epicritic pain can suppress protopathic pain.
There is no external stimulus for the sensation of pain. One of the most important aspects of pain discomfort is the difference between nociception and pain. Pain is a psychological state! For this reason, sensory receptors are not synonymous with pain receptors, and the stimulus does not produce “pain lines” either! Tissue damage irritates nociceptors. These stimuli are transmitted through peripheral nerves and multiple synapses through the spinal cord to the cerebral cortex. These more developed areas of the brain, which are necessary for the conscious sensation of pain, can only be found in higher mammals.
Experiments by neurophysiologists have confirmed that epicritic pain inhibits the excitation of nerve cells from protopathic, severe pain. As a result, protopathic excitation does not reach the brain at all, which means that the person does not feel severe pain.
This may explain the fact that when a person experiences severe pain, for example through an injury, he bites his lips or digs his nails into his arm. At least this way you can distract yourself until the doctor arrives and receives a painkiller injection.
The reactions that occur in the brainstem in response to nociception in defense reactions are not necessarily pain! Pain is always a conscious perception and is independent of nociception. This independence from pain and nociception is very well explained by the “model” person. For example, during anesthesia, severe interventions are performed without feeling pain. On the other hand, people suffer the most severe pain without any irritation or damage. In short, this means that the stimulus is not necessarily pain, and pain does not have to be based on the stimulus.
2. The meaning of pain
The sensation of pain directly depends on the importance attached to it. For example, in different cultures they attach different meanings to the pain of childbirth: in some places women can work and go about their business until the last moment, and start them again immediately after the birth of the child.
In Western cultures, the pain of childbirth is given great importance and a woman is initially set up for suffering, which is why she actually experiences it during the birth process.
Therefore, hypnosis and suggestion can also influence people in one direction or another. How pain is defined in the scientific literature. There are different definitions of pain, which are not absolute, but academic and social reasons. We remember that pain is a very personal experience, and each person feels his own personal pain. The “operational” explanation in response attempts to define how pain is measured. Such as the study of organisms, the prevention or elimination of pain, are often called the "operational school".
True, the reliability of this statement is very doubtful, since a reaction such as avoiding knowledge does not require consciousness. However, fish that have had their brains removed have been shown to continue to exhibit avoidance responses, black formation, and food consumption, so they do not require any brain.
It has been proven that concentrating on pain and expecting it increases pain sensations several times, and this leads to the following way to avoid pain - try not to pay attention to it and not attach much importance to it.
In addition, the sensation of pain decreases if a person is confident that everything will pass soon. For example, when patients in the study were given placebo pills, their pain levels decreased. Scientists associate this with the production of endorphins from the expectation of imminent relief.
The studies were carried out on several mammals, with large parts of the brain removed. The rats, which are often to be used as a model for humans and whose brains were removed, continued to respond to external stimuli, such as being fed by a nursery that was restrained by their paws. The rats made noise and licked the injection sites after syringe injection, attempting to bite the syringe or the performers. All these reactions are very complex and cannot be explained as simple reflexes to external stimuli. However, due to the lack of brain, these responses are not pain.
3. Emotional background
No less important is a person’s mood, the emotional background that accompanies pain. This position can be confirmed by the research of the doctor G. Becher, who observed the perception of pain of wounded soldiers during the Second World War.
The doctor noticed that wounded soldiers needed less morphine to relieve pain than people in peacetime after surgery. Becher associated this with emotional state people: soldiers were happy to be alive, while people after surgery tend to be pessimistic and easily depressed.
It is very difficult and indeed impossible to distinguish between nociception and pain through animal responses, as we saw with the “neutralized” rat. It is also difficult to differentiate between emotions and emotions. Emotions are fundamental, unconscious, subcortical, visceral, behavioral, hormonal or neural reactions to an external stimulus. The responses obtained to this stimulus are also included. Emotions are autonomous and provide the raw material for eventual conscious feeling. However, this occurs in more developed areas of the brain.
These cortical areas are necessary for Rose to consciously experience pain. Scientific avoidance of unpleasant stimuli is not evidence of pain and suffering! Structure, a necessary prerequisite for the perception of pain. In recent years, more and more scientists have realized that what they were seeing in animals in response to external stimuli was related to nociception, not pain. These responses could be recognized as spinal or brainstem reflexes and unconscious nociceptive responses.
Thus, A positive attitude makes a huge difference in the perception of pain - another reason to become an optimist.
4. Self-hypnosis and attitude
A large number of experiences and experiments prove that psychological attitudes a person greatly influences the sensation of pain. For example, athletes often do not feel pain during competitions because all their attention is directed to achieving the highest goal - victory.
A corollary of this finding is that animals' responses to external stimuli have nothing to do with conscious pain. Developing valid models of pain, as opposed to nociception, is a major challenge in pain research and regardless of animal model. For fish, the concept of pain cannot be used, since they do not have highly developed areas of the brain or even big brain. Therefore, Rose came to the conclusion that a fish cannot express the feeling of pain like a human.
“More than a simple reflex” is an unacceptable “definition”. Over the past few years, a number of publications have been published purporting to prove the existence of fish pain. One of the authors' main findings was that they found "evidence of pain in the fish." The authors defined pain as a response that is "more than a simple reflex." It has not been determined how a simple reflex differs from a more complex reflex! Does this also mean that any more complex response of living things to external stimuli must also reflect pain?
One study by scientists from Oxford University once again proves the importance of mental factors. The experiment involved 12 students, including Catholics, atheists and agnostics. During the experiment, participants were shown two paintings: “Lady with an Ermine” and “Madonna,” painted by Sassoferrato, a 17th-century painter. After showing the picture, the scientists released an electric discharge.
Let's remember the reaction of our legs when we receive a small blow below the knee disc. Our foot goes up without our awareness or influence. But do we necessarily feel pain? To define the question of a simple or complex reflex on a stimulus as a “pain reference,” the so-called specialized literature emerges and brings us back to the realization that there are no definitions of pain.
Research on a “sore” issue in fish. All studies of behaviors that might cause pain in fish suffer from a lack of distinction between nociception and pain. She then discovered unusual behaviors among the fish, such as rocking or rubbing their lips on the ground. These "unusual behaviors" were interpreted by Sneddon as "complex reflexes" and thus as pain, forgetting that a variety of environmental stimuli can cause a handful of behavioral manifestations in fish. But these reflexes, simple or complex, are responses to stimuli.
After the experiment, it turned out that religious students, after watching Madonna, felt less pain from the electric discharge than agnostics and atheists. Moreover, after watching “The Lady with an Ermine,” all participants felt approximately the same level of pain.
Thus, the mental state of believers who saw the image of their faith changed, which allowed them to feel less pain. The author of the experiment emphasized that the same state can be achieved through meditation.
Nociception in response to stimuli such as injections does not require consciousness and is therefore not pain. This article by Rose and his colleagues now shows the non-obviousness of Sneddon's conclusions in detail. All behavioral expression of fish to external and also dangerous stimuli does not prove the existence of consciously perceived pain.
Errors in the execution of the experiment and misinterpretation of a series of “scientific” pain studies were discovered and dissected. Research related to fish handling, injury or marking. What is the probability that the fish is nociceptively limited?
From this we can deduce the following: any mental attitude aimed at suppressing pain actually suppresses it. Such an effort could be prayer, meditation, the mindset that there is no pain or it subsides, or even something like this children's method how to repeat to yourself “It doesn’t hurt.”
What is most afraid of? modern man? Financial crisis, war, Dzhigurda? No, no, no: “children” of the 21st century are afraid of pain. And it's not a matter of mutation at all. human body and a sharp decrease in the pain threshold - it’s a matter of psychology: we are so accustomed to comfort that the slightest sensation of pain makes us run to the pharmacy and drink pills by the handful. But it turns out there are other ways to get rid of pain, such as outsmarting your own brain. Here are five ways to do it.
Pain is not a simple sensory perception of damaged tissue. Compared to humans or other mammals, fish have a limited capacity for nociception, especially through C fibers, which is a prerequisite for intense pain in humans. Anthropomorphic thinking leads to the distortion that fish should be as sensitive to nociception as they are to pain. But fish do not react to injury the way humans do. They are much more vulnerable to injury than mammals. At this point, people will be in severe pain, the fish "goes to their daily routine."
1. Drink coffee (or other caffeinated drinks)
Every year, in the spring, throwing off winter clothes, we look at ourselves critically in the mirror and reluctantly admit that before the start of the beach season it would be nice to lose a couple of kilograms. A saggy belly makes us want to get our cellulite buttocks off the couch and head to the gym, where we spend the whole day pedaling, lifting dumbbells and dying on the treadmill. And at the same time we feel great until the next morning comes.
The costs of incorrect definitions and the inevitable types of pain and suffering of fish. There are lay biases in the human-fish relationship that affect understanding of fish, their environment and needs, attitudes toward aquaculture and fisheries, fisheries biases, and biases in fisheries management.
It's time to define "fish pain and suffering" for what it really is, nothing more and nothing less. Are the next point of critical discussion. All these different studies show that even after the most severe interventions, the fish had normal behavior within a very short time. Such interventions in humans would not only be extremely painful, but would also be inactivated over a long period of time. Fish can even be immobilized in a supine position and thus operated without anesthesia, which improves their post-operative survival.
The body is not accustomed to such stress: the muscles ache painfully, the back does not straighten, the arms hang like whips. Do not rush to ask your loved ones to shoot you, because all this could be avoided if you “warm up” your body with caffeine in advance.
Scientists conducted an experiment: the first group of participants were given caffeine tablets, and the dosage of one capsule was equal to approximately two and a half cups of coffee. The second group received a supposed painkiller that was actually a placebo. Then the subjects spent the whole day in the gym, actively exercising. As a result, scientists found that the experiment participants who took caffeine pills felt much better the next day than their unlucky counterparts, and were even ready to go to the gym again.
It turns out that advertising does not lie: caffeine-containing energy drinks can really turn us into extreme sports enthusiasts who can easily overcome any obstacles.
And even if the biggest exercise stress, which you can afford is the movement of a computer mouse, there is good news for you too. In another study, experimenters asked volunteers to work continuously at a computer for an hour and a half, so that after 90 minutes the subjects' necks, shoulders and wrists became numb. It’s good that before the experiment began, the “experimental subjects” were advised to drink coffee. It turned out that those who followed this recommendation experienced much less pain than those who did not. So don’t rush to accuse colleagues who are constantly snooping around getting coffee of parasitism; perhaps they just have some pain?
2. Look at the part of the body that hurts
Think about your last injury—maybe you sprained your ankle or cut your finger. How did you feel at the moment when this happened? Most likely, you were overcome by a completely natural human reaction: “Damn! How painful it is! I’m going to bleed and die!” But instead of panic, you can use logic: carefully examine your injuries and assess how serious they are. You can't even imagine how much this will dull the pain.
The scientists did the following test: armed with a “magic” mirror and an infrared laser, they “burned” the right hands of the subjects, and they looked in the mirror, but saw in it the reflection of their left hand, which was not exposed to the laser. In other words, they felt pain, but saw that there was nothing wrong with their limbs, and the pain subsided! A small nuance: you definitely need to look at your injuries; seeing someone else’s “happiness” does not reduce suffering.
Scientists are still debating whether the visual perception of injury actually lowers the pain threshold, but in any case, a common sense assessment of the situation is better than hysteria.
3. Laugh
Picture this: You wake up in the middle of the night to be awakened by your own bladder. You jump out of bed, rush to the toilet with half-closed eyes... and stumble over the threshold. Pain! Wild unbearable pain! What will you do at such a moment? Of course, after you remember someone’s mother and send the door in a certain direction, you will burst into tears or dejectedly go to the toilet. How about a weak laugh?
“Laughter is the best medicine,” psychologists say. Of course, laughter is unlikely to help a cancer tumor dissolve or stop bleeding, but a sense of humor definitely helps reduce pain. Laughter helps the brain produce endorphins - happy hormones that have pain-relieving properties, thanks to which you will suffer less if you force yourself to laugh at a critical moment.
Scientists conducted a series of tests in which they studied the behavior of volunteers at home and in laboratory conditions: some of the subjects were asked to watch funny Internet videos, and some were asked to watch boring popular science programs. It turned out that the experiment participants who laughed at funny videos tolerated pain much easier than those who delved into serious documentaries. In addition, just 15 minutes of laughter is enough to reduce the pain threshold by as much as 10%.
But for laughter to have a healing effect, you must learn to laugh correctly: you need to laugh from the bottom of your heart, to the point of colic, inhaling the air deeply. And don’t pay attention to sidelong glances from the outside - he who laughs last laughs best.
4. Convince yourself that pain is good.
You can have different attitudes towards neurolinguistic programming: some think that it is complete nonsense, while others have personally experienced the benefits of affirmations. But the fact that pain and pain are different is a fact. Agree, an aching tooth is an SOS signal indicating serious dental problems, while muscles that “suffer” after exercise are just a sign of atrophy, and that is why our brain can perceive pain as a good thing.
To prove this, scientists again took up experiments. They recruited two groups of brave souls, put tourniquets on their hands, thereby limiting the flow of blood, and asked them to endure discomfort, as long as you have enough strength. At the same time, the first group was told that the test was dangerous for their limbs, and the second, on the contrary, that it would strengthen their muscles: the longer they last, the more benefits they would receive. As a result, the researchers found that the pain threshold of the latter was significantly higher than that of the former. The experiment was repeated several times, but the results remained the same: the “intimidated” participants were writhing in pain within a few minutes, and the subjects from the second group endured it, believing that they would eventually get biceps like Schwarzenegger’s.
Thus, little lies to save oneself turned out to be very useful. So next time, when you hit your finger instead of a nail, think not about the pain, but about the invaluable experience you are gaining.
5. Look at something terrible
Imagine yourself in the dentist's chair: trembling with fear, you look at the “torture” instruments, the drill, the sound of which makes you covered in cold, sticky sweat. To distract yourself a little, you look away and see paintings with beautiful landscapes or posters with cute cats on the wall. The doctor took care of you, decorating the office with calming pictures, but unfortunately, he did not know that horror photographs are much more effective in this case.
Restless scientists conducted the following experiment: they showed subjects slides depicting people in various life situations - from neutral to catastrophic. And before that, they were asked to put their hand in a reservoir of ice water and hold it there as long as they had enough patience. The paradox is that the volunteers who saw unpleasant pictures tolerated pain better than those who admired the flowers.
Remember, if you want to distract someone from painful sensations, do not play “Luntik” for them; rather, show them the bloodiest scene from “Saw.” And don’t run away from a dentist’s office decorated with zombie portraits: most likely, he is a very good specialist who understands not only dentistry, but also psychology.
