Essay On Neuropathic Pain

You usually feel back pain after lifting a heavy object, move suddenly, sit in one position for too long or suffer an injury or

H. Sannu has experienced two devastating events: loss of my elination of peripheral nerves and below-the-knee amputation of a leg. Sannu has been experiencing sensations in a limb that had no sensation prior to the amputation. How might this be possible?

In case of a pinched nerve condition the signal is by some means interrupted along the way and is consequently not capable to transmit the message. The significant areas of the body that are more susceptible to nerve compression include the neck or lower back caused by a herniated disc, arthritis, bone spurs, or spinal stenoisis. The main causes of pinched nerve include nerve pressure; injury, poor posture, osteoarthritis, sports activities, and obesity. Due to these conditions the tissue are compressed resulting in

The cause of pain can be puzzling and is not always related to specific pathology (Croft et al.,

Pain effects the body through the nerves. The phenomena of pain is conveyed from a peripheral part of the person, through afferent nerves to a part of the brain, similar to sight, touch, and hearing. These signals are then interpreted by the brain as pain (Murphy, 1981). The nerve cells used to relay pain messages to the brain are specific nerve cells called nociceptors. These nerves do not send messages until "the stimulus reaches noxious levels," (McClesky, 1992).

The earliest hypothesis regarding the cause of phantom limbs and pain was that of neuromas. These were thought to be nodules comprised of remaining nerves located at the end of the stump. These neuromas presumably continued to generate impulses that traveled up the spinal cord to portions of the thalamus and somatosensory domains of the cortex. As a result, treatment involved cutting the nerves just above the neuroma in an attempt to interrupt signaling at each somatosensory level (5). This and other related theories were deemed unsatisfactory because of the fact the phantom pain always returned, indicating that there was a more complex reason.

Neuropathic pain is described as burning, shooting, and tingling. Nociceptive pain originating from visceral sites is described as aching if localized and cramping if poorly localized; from somatic sites, it is described as throbbing/aching.

Neuropathic pain is the result of injury. “Neuropathic pain can occur as the result of such conditions as shingles, cancer, phantom limb pain, the phenomenon known as entrapment neuropath” (The Gazette). People with pain go see a doctor and they get subscribe to pain killers. However Pain killers can be very dangerous. For instance on can get addicted to pain killers by taking them for a long period of time. Using pain killers can be damage to your system and by the time you don’t need them anymore the body will still want them.

There are many different types of pain which can be categorised depending on how the pain is caused and how long the pain lasts. If pain results from tissue damage then it is called nociceptive pain and this includes pain from pressure applied outside of the body, like a cut or a burn, or from pressure inside the body such as a tumour. Another type of pain is neuropathic pain which is pain experienced when there is damage to

pain differently than those without the disease due to dysfunction in the central nervous system

This pervasiveness of low back pain causes a great economic strain on individuals, families, communities, industries, and governments as it is the leading reason of activity limitation and work absence worldwide (Andersson, 1997, 93-141). In the United Kingdom, more than 100 million work days are lost every year due to low back pain disability among young adults (Croft, 1993, 710-3). In Sweden, more than 28 million work days were lost in 1987, quadrupling the 7 million lost in 1980 (Croft, 1993, 710-3). And in the United States, 149 million work days are lost every year (Guo, Tanaka, Halperin,

Pain is something that connects all of us. From birth to death we can identify with each other the idea and arguably the perception of it. We all know we experience it, but what is more important is how we all perceive it. It is known that there are people out there with a ‘high’ pain tolerance and there are also ones out there with a ‘low’ pain tolerance, but what is different between them? We also know that pain is an objective response to certain stimuli, there are neurons that sense and feel pain and there are nerve impulses that send these “painful” messages to the brain. What we don’t know is where the pain

An extensive matrix of neurons in the brain gives us the sense of our own bodies and body parts. Pain results when this matrix produces an abnormal pattern of activity, as a result of memories, emotions, expectations or signals from various brain centres and not just from signals from peripheral nerves. Because of the lack of sensory stimulation or a person’s efforts to move a nonexistent limb, abnormal patterns may arise, resulting in phantom pain.

Pain is not only defined as a sensation or a physical awareness, but also entails perception. Moreover, pain is an unpleasant and an uncomfortable emotion that is transferred to the brain by sensory neurons. There are various kinds of pain and how one perceives them is varied as well. Certain parts of the brain also play a key role in how one feels pain such as the parietal lobe, which is involved in interpreting pain while the hypothalamus is responsible for the response to pain one has. Although some believe pain is just a physical awareness and is in the body, pain is all in one’s mind because the perception of pain and the emotion that controls its intensity differs in individuals and when pain itself is administered to the body, the brain determines the emotions one attaches to each painful experience.

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (1979). Pain is actually the culprit behind warranting a visit to a physician office for many people (Besson, 1999). Notoriously unpleasant, pain could also pose a threat as both a psychological and economic burden (Phillips, 2006). Sometimes pain does happen without any damage of tissue or any likely diseased state. The reasons for such pain are poorly understood and the term used to describe such type of pain is “psychogenic pain”. Also, the loss of productivity and daily activity due to pain is also significant. Pain engulfs a trillion dollars of GDP for lost work time and disability payments (Melnikova, 2010). Untreated pain not only impacts a person suffering from pain but also impacts their whole family. A person’s quality of life is negatively impacted by pain and it diminishes their ability to concentrate, work, exercise, socialize, perform daily routines, and sleep. All of these negative impacts ultimately lead to much more severe behavioral effects such as depression, aggression, mood alterations, isolation, and loss of self-esteem, which pose a great threat to human society.