"Chronic pain serves no useful purpose"

stickywicket

How true! I had to agree with the doc on Radio 4's 'Inside Healing' programme. Her interesting point was that there is no evidence that the strong opioid drugs – morphine, fentanyl etc - do any good for chronic pain, only for the short term stuff. (She should know. Her job is weaning people off them.)

I just loved that sentence. I've maintained for ages that arthritic pain largely serves no useful purpose. I wonder if evolution will see an end to it. If so, I don't suppose I'll be around to not feel it :roll:

dreamdaisy

What a neat turn of phrase and of course it doesn't. Pain is the body's way of letting its owner know that something is amiss, so in the case of toothache, earache, pulled muscles and strained joints etc. it of some use but for us it has 'no useful purpose'. I remember watching a documentary about people who do not feel any form of pain whatsoever; at first I thought 'Fantastic!' but then when the drawbacks were explained I realised that it is a useful part of life.

Living with chronic pain far from easy but being afraid of it is. Pain hurts so it's no wonder people don't like it and wish to escape from it. DD

Starburst

It's an interesting statement. It might seen like an obvious one but not one I really think about that often. That said, I occasionally tell me joints "alright, I get it, you HURT!".

LignumVitae

Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with this statement I suspect Mr LV would disagree. The pain from his shoulder (which might disappear if he ever did his physio exercises) reminds him to complain about it regularly enough for me to struggle not to roll my eyes when he brings it up every half hour.

hileena111

Hi LV
I like it He is a man after all what do you expect :roll:

It is true...acute pain....if you put your hand over something hot you immediately draw your hand back but chronic pain ?????
No use whatsoever as far as I can see

Love
Hileena

stickywicket

I think we're talking here about the difference between chronic bloke pain and chronic female pain. The former requires pain relief, sympathy and a few beers while the latter apparently thrives on neglect and housework

LignumVitae

Pain relief and a running commentary in this house! That said, he had a tattoo done before christmas and is still complaining about it itching. Tomorrow he goes for another one and I shudder at the thought of the complaints. I think it is just the state of a Mr LV - to let the world know about everything. I do so hate it when he has an upset stomach :oops:

I guess though, to return to the original question (and I like your description of short term pain being useful Hileena) why does the pain not just go away then?! I know we kind of get used to it - can you remember what pain free felt like? But as it is a signal from your body I wonder why it doesn't just switch off...not like we need reminding of how rubbish our joints already are!

dreamdaisy

Apparently males have more pain receptors than females and understandably so when you look at it in the 'old fashioned' terms of hunter-gatherer and birth-giver: the hunter-gatherers need to know they are in trouble far sooner than the those who give birth, so they can evade further danger, whereas females have to deal with severe discomfort / sharp pain / utter agony for a few hours but then it's done and dusted. I admit that these are very simplistic terms but it does put things into certain perspective: dare you tell Mr LV that, as his tattoo pain is self-inflicted, he has no right to complain about the odd twinge or two?

Pain has a use when the damaged stuff can be fixed and properly repaired. Our pain has no use whatsoever apart from letting us know that we're overdoing things. DD

LignumVitae

He's still a big soft lump DD. I think there is a strong correlation with Mr LV between pain and panic - he has just sent off the application for indefinite leave to remain on our lovely soils. His sense of pain has increased tenfold and don't I know it. To be fair, watching that link be so obvious in him has helped me to assess it in myself too so there's another potential purpose for chronic pain. I utter the self inflictedline nearly as often as I suggest he does his shoulder exercises. Apparently I have no sympathy - true that!

stickywicket

If only we could link pain into current medical capabilities ie the 'pain warning' would only come on when there was a chance of pharmaceutical or surgical expertise sorting it out 8)

However, I do think there is an element of 'ignore it and it'll go away'. Only an element, mind you, but certainly the more we concentrate on it the worse it feels and the more we can concentrate on other things (I know, at its worst it won't let us) the less we notice it. (This may only apply to females )

tjt6768

As a tattooed BLOKE I take offence lol...


I do admit that the fentanyl sure worked better at first but as with most strong pain meds, you get used to em.. I do need them constantly, believe me, I have weaned off them before and the pain was unbearable constantly. So now, I use them all the time but differ the strengths. I despise this pain, it is unlike other pains like a cut or even toothache.. much more bl@@dy annoying lol.



PS... Once you start a tattoo there is always room for many many more lol..
tell him to use Bepanthan on the fresh tattoo... it's for babies bottoms I believe lol.. great stuff, I've used it for yrs and all my tattoos have healed very well with no scabbing etc..

LignumVitae

I did Tony - used that myself when I had mine - he knew better of course and is still itchy :roll:

frogmella

I think that the trouble is that there is some blurring of the terms chronic pain. When I went on my pain management course they defined both chronic and acute pain. Acute pain is the response to an injury. The chronic pain that drugs have no effect on is the pain that your body has "learnt". It is pain that remains long after an injury is healed. The trouble is that this gets lumped in with our type of chronic pain that is because we have a permanent "injury" i.e. arthritis. In our case the chronic means long term rather than this "learnt" pain.
I soon clocked the difference when the people at the course kept on about how chronic pain doesn't get worse with activity etc. I knew that mine did. Just like acute pain. There were other examples too but it was along time ago! Our pain is a response to the injury in our joints and that injury doesn't heal. I think what we have is chronic acute pain. In as much as we have perpetual acute pain from our joints. I bet most of you have pain that does get worse with activity. Not all activities but some/most.
So, in short, what I am trying to say is that pain killers won't work on chronic pain as they see it but for people with chronic acute pain (our response to permanent injury) it should help (a bit).

Starburst

frogmella, your post fascinated me and I suppose that I have not thought about it in that way. I read your post this morning and have been pondering about it on and off all day. When people say "chronic pain", I do tend to think of conditions like fibromyalgia syndrome where nothing is physically 'wrong' (injured) as such but the pain signals are the problem.

I do agree that distraction is a useful technique in managing pain like arthritis pain. I do relaxation techniques and attempt meditation, although the art of emptying my mind is not an easy one for me. There is a well recognised link between pain and emotions.

LignumVitae

Frogmella - I love that. It makes such sense, thank you!

dreamdaisy

Wow frogmella, that is a very interesting post and certainly strikes a chord with me. So, we have chronic acute pain - CAP - yet another acronym for the forum to master! DD

stickywicket

That does sound an interesting distinction, frogmella although the doc on the programme simply talked about pain which persisted over 3 months. If anyone wants to read the transcript it's here. It's the middle section of the programme and – my mistake – the programme's called 'Inside Health' (not healing) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wv052

I think one point made was that once you get above about 100-150 milligrams per day of morphine (whether taken orally or as fentanyl patches etc) then all your opioid receptors are saturated so more is unlikely to help.

frogmella

Thanks for the thanks! It was just what I worked out sat at the pain management course and afterwards when I digested all the info.

SW - I can see that there is a limit to how well opioids will work - once the receptors are full then that is that! I might have to give it a listen!

frogmorton

Blimey!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was very interesting :shock:

A lot of that struck a chord with me too....

thanks everyone

Slosh

Frogmella, just wanted to add my thanks to others. I also thinkthat is a very useful way of thinking about it. Thank you