What would happen to us if we could no longer feel pain?

In life, we are bound to get hurt sometimes. Experience tells us that this often brings some pain. But do you know? Sometimes, being hurt does not necessarily bring pain, and the pain is not necessarily caused by being hurt. What is the reason behind this? If pain brings trouble, will we be happy without pain?

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Why don’t I feel pain when I’m injured?

For example, an athlete on the football field is injured during a game, but at this time his focus is on winning and playing football. In this case, he will not feel pain, even though his injury may be serious.

Another situation is that we may feel pain even if there is no injury. This is because the pain puts too much pressure on our brain and an inflammatory response occurs in the body. It is also possible that the sheer amount of stress causes nerve disorders in the brain.

Nowadays, surgery seems to be commonplace for modern people. But in fact, surgery is a kind of harm to the body in a sense, and the harm is often accompanied by pain. In order to reduce this pain, anesthetics for surgery came into being.

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However, people who have had anesthesia know that during this process, although we temporarily do not feel pain, we still feel the skin being pulled. So what is the reason for this?

Pain is transmitted through Aδ fibers and C fibers, which are relatively thin nerve fibers. Our sense of touch is transmitted through thicker fibers, which transmit the pathway after reaching the spinal cord. Therefore, the pathways for the two to transmit upward are different.

Anesthetics can relieve pain, and they block the upload of pain information. However, they actually block the upload of pain information, and the information that transmits touch and pain is different. Therefore, although we cannot feel pain, we still have other sensations.

I'm not injured, so why am I feeling pain?

Modern people have high work pressure, fast pace of life, irregular diet and work and rest, and often experience unexplained body pain and other problems. Going to the hospital for a checkup but unable to find the cause of the disease, what is going on?

Most people are in sub-health condition

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There are several possibilities at this time. The first possibility is that it is due to work tension and too much pressure.

This leads to some psychogenic pain without any organic lesions. Another is a state similar to sub-health - that is, there may be changes in the body, but it is difficult to observe based on current medical technology. However, although it cannot be detected, the pain does occur, so it is still necessary to pay attention to it.

If it is the first reason, then you should relax yourself appropriately and not put too much pressure on yourself. At the same time, pay attention to your work and rest schedule, exercise appropriately, and avoid putting your body in a sub-healthy state for a long time, such as poor blood flow, which may also cause pain.

Is pain really useless?

Not all pain can be diagnosed. For thousands of years, people have been troubled by pain. Pain seems to have become a bad word, but is pain really that bad?

Actually, it is not true. If humans lose their sense of pain, the consequences will be disastrous. There is a type of patient who is born unable to feel pain. No matter how much damage you do to him, he will not feel pain. The reason for this is that he has a gene mutation or a gene defect in his body, which prevents the harmful information from being transmitted to the brain through the pain pathway, so he cannot feel it even if he is injured.

I think heat is also a pain protection mechanism

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Pain itself has a protective mechanism. The first is to prevent yourself from being exposed to harmful stimuli, and the other is to keep you as quiet as possible after you are injured, to avoid activities that cause secondary damage to tissues and organs, and to recover as quickly as possible.

If you lose this double protection, you may not be able to detect threats in life, and you may be easily injured, or even in danger of your life. As mentioned earlier, patients with congenital analgesia generally have a shorter life span because they lose the protection of pain. Patients may do things that are particularly harmful to ordinary people, so that the longest life span of people with this disease is only 22 years old.

This girl is from Canada. She was admitted to university and is the longest-lived patient with congenital analgesia according to existing records. Because her father is a doctor and understands the severity of his daughter's disease, he and the girl's family took good care of her and loved her so that she could grow up. Her family played the role of the first line of protection for her, preventing her from doing something dangerous and hurting herself.

But after she was hurt, she didn’t feel any pain, so she didn’t know that she had been hurt, so she couldn’t calm down. She couldn’t recover, so the inflammation in her body became more and more serious, and she eventually died of myelitis at the age of 22.

Are modern people more afraid of pain?

When the older generation feels unwell and has unexplained pain, they often choose to endure it. However, a recent online survey on pain shows that more than 70% of netizens prefer to take painkillers to relieve pain.

6.41% of netizens have one type of painkiller at home, 26.92% have two types of painkillers, 34.62% have three or more types of painkillers, and only 1.28% of netizens have no painkillers at home. Is it true that modern people are becoming more and more afraid of pain?

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In fact, this also involves social culture and education. Because for people who have suffered, pain is not an important thing. Life experience tells them that various living conditions or other things may be more important. He may not show it, but his feelings about pain are the same as others.

Now that people's living conditions have improved, they are more afraid of pain, which is understandable. Generally speaking, we do not recommend enduring pain. Because pain is an alarm system, especially for acute pain. When you feel pain, it is very likely that there is some disease or injury in a certain part of the body. If you do not find the cause or treat it in time, then the problem may become more and more serious.

We cannot ignore pain, but we don’t need to be afraid of it either. Pain is a subjective feeling and emotional experience. For example, when we get an injection for the first time, we feel it is very painful, but when we are familiar with the injection process, we will feel less pain. However, if you feel something is wrong with your body, you should go to the hospital as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary harm due to delay.

Note: The content of this article was compiled by the editor based on an interview with Mr. Hu Li.

This article is produced by Science Popularization China and supervised by China Science Popularization Expo

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