Jul 3, 2015

Understanding Pain


Obviously, one of the benefits of massage is reducing pain.  Pain seems to be a hot topic in neuroscience, and I’ve been curious about it for a while.  In the world where pain is merely masked by painkillers, not understanding and treating the source of pain, I would really hope that more research will be conducted to understand and treat pain with a totally different approach.

Pain is still a mystery.  There is more unknown than known, but we have slowly discovered what pain really is.  Here is a very funny TED Talks video by Prof. Lorimer Moseley (FYI: he is not a comedian) “Why Things Hurt.”  He states that “any credible evidence of danger to your body will modulate pain,” even an illusion.  This talk didn’t touch on chronic pain, but in his another lecture (“Body in mind - the role of the brain in chronic pain”), he states that the chronic pain is “no longer an accurate indication of the state of the body” and “we can retrain the brain to regain precision.

Understanding pain is not that simple.  We should always consider there are people who are suffering from pain everyday and pay attention to their emotional and psychological pain at the same time.