Why pain has levels how does body work and why do we feel like the leg fracture I had last week wasn’t that painful like the hand fracture I have right now . And why emotional pain is more hurtful than the physical pain even it doesn’t hurt in body ?
In: Biology
Those pain scales are mostly used (or better should only be used) to follow pain progression in patients. So if one were to ask a palliative cancer patient how their pain is and they keep reporting increasing numbers you know that you need to adjust your pain medication schedule.
They really cannot be used to judge if patient A is truly feeling more pain as patient B, because pain is completely subjective.
To answer your second question: when you break a bone you obviously get massive tissue damage, this is then reverted to you brain over ‘pain nervs’. The brain gets this signal and then translates this into the sensation of pain. This means that the actual feeling sensation of pain is in our brain and our brain and it’s output is affected by, well ultimately, absolutely everything. Distractions, our general wellbeing, stress, memories of other painfully sensations, etc, etc. In addition to that we also have our bodies own opioids (called endorphins) that are released and can inhibit the pain nerves. There are occasions were people who were severely wounded in combat or an accident, but due to the immense adrenalin and stress of the situation, just did not feel the pain at all. There are also occasions were patients have quite mild injuries, but their pain system is so oversensitized that to them it feels like the worse pain ever.
(Anyway, sorry, not really ELI5, and a bit long, but I find the way our bodies deal with pain super interesting)
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