For example, I cut my arm and I immediately feel pain. Pain is there to notify me that something is wrong or that I’m injured, but now that I’m aware and that I’ve taken care of it (say poured some disinfecant and wrapped it up) why do I still feel that pain. Why can’t our brain know that the wound is not dangerous anymore?
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Because you damage is still not healed. If it didn’t hurt then you’d go back to using it at normal strength and you could make it worse before it has the opportunity to heal.
Natural selection doesn’t care about your comfort as long as you survive long enough to make babies
Because you damage is still not healed. If it didn’t hurt then you’d go back to using it at normal strength and you could make it worse before it has the opportunity to heal.
Natural selection doesn’t care about your comfort as long as you survive long enough to make babies
How your injury looks is a poor indication of how healed/dangerous it is (you cannot see what it’s like internally, and you can’t see it externally either if you cover it up with bandage).
Others have already said that the continuing pain is to prevent you from further hurting yourself until the injury is healed (without the pain you’d likely move your injured part around, thus slowing the healing process).
Pain signals are important for us to survive everyday life. It prevents us from doing things like biting the tip of our tongue off, burning ourselves on hot surfaces, fracturing our bones due to constantly bumping into things, not noticing foreign objects in our eyes and thus damaging our vision, not noticing infections, etc.
There are people who have a rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia. These people cannot feel/react to pain so they have to try to monitor themselves to avoid things like I just described above. Unfortunately, this is very difficult and most die in childhood due to missed infections and injuries that us pain-feeling folks would’ve noticed long before they became fatal.
Take some pain medication to dull the pain if need be, but appreciate the importance of what pain signals are doing for you.
How your injury looks is a poor indication of how healed/dangerous it is (you cannot see what it’s like internally, and you can’t see it externally either if you cover it up with bandage).
Others have already said that the continuing pain is to prevent you from further hurting yourself until the injury is healed (without the pain you’d likely move your injured part around, thus slowing the healing process).
Pain signals are important for us to survive everyday life. It prevents us from doing things like biting the tip of our tongue off, burning ourselves on hot surfaces, fracturing our bones due to constantly bumping into things, not noticing foreign objects in our eyes and thus damaging our vision, not noticing infections, etc.
There are people who have a rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia. These people cannot feel/react to pain so they have to try to monitor themselves to avoid things like I just described above. Unfortunately, this is very difficult and most die in childhood due to missed infections and injuries that us pain-feeling folks would’ve noticed long before they became fatal.
Take some pain medication to dull the pain if need be, but appreciate the importance of what pain signals are doing for you.
How your injury looks is a poor indication of how healed/dangerous it is (you cannot see what it’s like internally, and you can’t see it externally either if you cover it up with bandage).
Others have already said that the continuing pain is to prevent you from further hurting yourself until the injury is healed (without the pain you’d likely move your injured part around, thus slowing the healing process).
Pain signals are important for us to survive everyday life. It prevents us from doing things like biting the tip of our tongue off, burning ourselves on hot surfaces, fracturing our bones due to constantly bumping into things, not noticing foreign objects in our eyes and thus damaging our vision, not noticing infections, etc.
There are people who have a rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia. These people cannot feel/react to pain so they have to try to monitor themselves to avoid things like I just described above. Unfortunately, this is very difficult and most die in childhood due to missed infections and injuries that us pain-feeling folks would’ve noticed long before they became fatal.
Take some pain medication to dull the pain if need be, but appreciate the importance of what pain signals are doing for you.
People who were less aware of pain would have a higher chance of dying, since they were less aware of injuries.
People who were more aware of pain would have a higher chance of living long enough to have children, because they would be more conscious of injuries and would therefore be more careful and/or seek aid.
Therefore, we are all the descendants of the people who paid attention to pain – so we are highly attentive to pain signals.
People who were less aware of pain would have a higher chance of dying, since they were less aware of injuries.
People who were more aware of pain would have a higher chance of living long enough to have children, because they would be more conscious of injuries and would therefore be more careful and/or seek aid.
Therefore, we are all the descendants of the people who paid attention to pain – so we are highly attentive to pain signals.
People who were less aware of pain would have a higher chance of dying, since they were less aware of injuries.
People who were more aware of pain would have a higher chance of living long enough to have children, because they would be more conscious of injuries and would therefore be more careful and/or seek aid.
Therefore, we are all the descendants of the people who paid attention to pain – so we are highly attentive to pain signals.
Natural selection doesn’t care about suffering, only passing on of genes, and what we have at the moment is good enough for that.
Pain fibres respond to tissue damage. Even when you’ve addressed the problem, that doesn’t mean the tissue damage has fully healed. That takes time and generally once it’s fully healed, the pain goes away. For the moment I’m ignoring things like neuropathic pain that can persist after healing.
Mechanistically, it’s much simpler for the body to simply respond to tissue damage than to have some mechanism to shut off pain signals after you’ve dealt with it. What if that system malfunctions and you don’t feel pain at all? We know that people with congential insensitivity to pain are much more prone to injuries. Also, for most of human history, we didn’t have the ability to deal with injuries well. We could bandage them, but that’s about it. We didn’t have disinfectant or antibiotics, or effective ways to suture wounds, or most other things we use today. If there was pain, it’s likely there was a problem that could still hurt you.
Natural selection doesn’t care about suffering, only passing on of genes, and what we have at the moment is good enough for that.
Pain fibres respond to tissue damage. Even when you’ve addressed the problem, that doesn’t mean the tissue damage has fully healed. That takes time and generally once it’s fully healed, the pain goes away. For the moment I’m ignoring things like neuropathic pain that can persist after healing.
Mechanistically, it’s much simpler for the body to simply respond to tissue damage than to have some mechanism to shut off pain signals after you’ve dealt with it. What if that system malfunctions and you don’t feel pain at all? We know that people with congential insensitivity to pain are much more prone to injuries. Also, for most of human history, we didn’t have the ability to deal with injuries well. We could bandage them, but that’s about it. We didn’t have disinfectant or antibiotics, or effective ways to suture wounds, or most other things we use today. If there was pain, it’s likely there was a problem that could still hurt you.
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