Pain
is a mysterious phenomenon that already starts with its definition.
Although everyone has made at least once this agonizing experience, we
find it hard to define what pain really is. The ancient Greeks said
that pain would be a "barking guard dog of health". So we have to admit
that this signal impossible to ignore may have a positive intention. In
a current mode of expression it is said that pain has a protective
effect.
So far
was it was rather in vain to find a “pain centre”
in the brain or elsewhere in the body. But since the 60's science gives
us more and more evidence with the gate-control theory (by Melzack
& Wall 1965) that the perceived pain is the result of
calculations of the impulses. The various impulses are netted against
each other on their way into our consciousness. This explains why e.g.
relaxation techniques, meditation or reflexology treatments can provide
us with pain relief.
However, let's consider the most common pain a little closer, the one
in the musculoskeletal system. Here we can see that it requires an
interplay of several factors in order to perceive pain. The
disturbances must exceed a certain individual level in intensity, they
are to affect a sensitized terrain and they must exceed our capacity of
compensation of the system. Only then the pain reactions attain a
certain value of an illness.
An occurrence, such as pain where so many factors are involved, obeys
laws that we know of all dynamic processes. Even health and disease
fall into this category. All have in common is that there is no
absolute measure, but a dynamic equilibrium which is set by internal
and external changes again and again. Concerning the pain in
particular, there is no universally applicable threshold of pain, and
pain is not unchangeable. On the contrary, pain offers in its
reassessment at each changeover point an abundance of possibilities.
One of them are reflexology treatments. Together with other measures
they provide a wide range of influences on this agonizing and
tormenting experiences.
An example for this would be the “referred
pain”
This means pain-sensitive areas
of skin, muscles, joint capsules or
fascia, resulting from the fact that our brain "calculated incorrectly"
and makes a misjudgement of a localization.
An example of this would be a
scar in the backside of shoulder area that caused a malfunction. But
the localization in the cerebral cortex is perceived as pain in the
acromio-clavicular joint. Somewhere in one of the switch points an
error has sneaked in the impulse transfer. Assigned to the same
segmental floor the pain is perceived at some place else.
