Why People Feel Pain

Pain is a chemical and physical response mediated by nerves throughout the body.

The nerves can be thought of as telephone wires spread out around the body connecting various parts of the body. At one end of the fiber is a single pain receptor which we can think of as the phone in your house, and at the other end is the operator which is the spinal cord.

When something is dysfunctional in the body, the receptors send a message which travels as an electric signal along the nerve fibers until it reaches the spinal cord.

Within the spinal cord, the message will either be transmitted to the brain by the operator, in which you will feel the pain, or the message fails to get sent by the operator and pain is not sensed.

We are consciously aware of the pain only when the message is sent to the brain.

Pain comes in various forms and is not always the same each time.

It comes in different forms including:

From an injury e.g. a burnt finger, broken bone or tissues damaged by cancer

Acute pain which is sharp, although resolves quickly once the problem is solved

Chronic pain where tissue damage is apparent and ongoing or can also be because pain receptors, nerve pathways or the spinal cord have been damaged

Reiterated, pain is a physical/chemical response that is caused by changes in the human body. It is an unpleasant sensory experience associated with actual or potential damage to your tissues.