Some say that life is pain. But they are optimists. In fact, life is not pain, that pain, plural: teeth pain, lower back pain, the pain of parting, the pain of loss, the pain of dissonance, stomach pain and sore throat, pain fatigue and hardship of the limbs — thousands of different manifestations of this state that every person in one way or another is experiencing before (most likely painful) death. But what a pain — physically speaking — “hurt” the most? Let us turn to professionals, exploring the pain: the doctors.
The most excruciating pain: trigeminal neuralgia
David Yeomans, an anesthesiologist from Stanford University, believes that people think the worst pain of trigeminal neuralgia.
The trigeminal nerve conveys information about pain in the head and face. If you have a toothache, the face, eyes, anything, it all goes through the trigeminal nerve. In some people, it so happens that the blood vessel expands or hipertrofiada and presses on the trigeminal nerve. Often patients describe this pain as if lightning hits the part of the face. The attack does not last long — up to two minutes but can occur up to hundreds of times a day, being caused by very weak stimulation: for example, a gust of cold wind, brushing your teeth or shaving. Many people with trigeminal neuralgia cease to brush their teeth for this reason. There are problems with the teeth.
Specialists use the so-called pain digital pain scale to assess pain patients. The scale can be put from 0 to 10, and almost everyone with trigeminal neuralgia, assess their pain on a 10 as the worst pain you can imagine.
To some extent, this is curable. There are medicines created for epileptics which help people at least at first. But there are side effects of drugs as would be stultifying you.
In the end, people having the surgery. One of the operational interventions can open the skull and place a small pillow between the nerve and blood vessel. The relief is almost instant, but every second required re-operation. Or patients are subjected to focused ionizing radiation directed to the site, which is in a problematic place, and how would probecat system. Usually that helps too.
Many mothers say that childbirth is the worst pain they have ever experienced, and indeed it is. But those who have had a birth, and then trigeminal neuralgia, will tell you that neuralgia is much worse.
Chronic pain
Theodore Price, the chief researcher of PAIN Neurobiology Research Group, believes that the worst physical pain is that which cannot be controlled. This is a huge problem for people with intractable chronic pain. This happens in people with pain, which was originally a result of injury, long ago healed, but still not going away.
One common way of occurrence of such chronic pain is when someone gets in a car accident and breaks a limb. Trauma can destroy the nerve and damaged nerve causes neuropathic pain that does not go away.
Another, more common example is cancer chemotherapy. The patient is receiving chemotherapy and it kills the cancer, but the toxicity of treatments is neuropathy, which persists after cessation of chemotherapy. The patient gets rid of cancer, but for many years after feels a burning pain in the hands and feet.
This kind of pain destroys the quality of life and basic functions. Few people realize that 7-10% of the population suffers from chronic pain of this type, with a high level of influence on everyday life. Unfortunately, this type of pain is also extremely difficult to treat.
Fibromyalgia
Moab, Ibrahim, associate Professor of anesthesiology and pharmacology at the University of Arizona, says that many people that fall under certain criteria and with the pain which can not cope the doctors fall into the category of fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is difficult to cure. Difficult, but impossible. The symptoms may vary from person to person — diffuse pain and depression, for the most part.
But from a physical point of view, the worst pain is likely pain without a known diagnosis — when you pass all the tests and they all negative. In that kind of pain plays an important role in psychology and psychological problems can often manifest as pain. One of the ways of treatment to give patients to understand that their pain can come from other, non-physical source. Another way is to attract psychiatrists to the treatment. But it is hard to cure something when you don’t know what to treat.
Often, when people think about the worst kind of pain, they expect to hear something like “needles which are pushed under the fingernails” — something traumatic. Such things can certainly be very painful, but they do not last very long, and we measure the pain intensity and duration. It is difficult for us to say that the short-term pain of torture, stronger than chronic lower back pain, for example.
But the attempt to define the worst kind of pain also depends on what we accept for the pain and some consider it a goal.
The challenge of pain is to warn us about threats to our body: it stimulates nerve cells, which alert us that there is a threat, then included the spinal cord, then the brain interpreterpath signal to the background context.
A few years ago in Australia there was a case. One of the divers of the Navy have made a practical immersion in Sydney harbour, suddenly felt in the side and leg and poked a piece of chips. He shrugged off the chips, but then realized that he could not move hand. “Looks like it’s not driftwood,” he thought. Then he looked down and saw that his whole leg was in the shark’s mouth. And the hand was in the mouth of the shark. And seeing this, he said, he experienced the most intense pain you can imagine.
His nerve endings were screaming about the danger of a brain, but he still did not suspect that he was bitten by a shark. It says little to us about pain: it is associated not only with what your body feels, but how the brain processes the signal. If it handles the signal as very dangerous, he will determine the appropriate level of pain you will experience.
Most people think that pain is there to tell about what is happening in our body — for example, people with back pain may think that they have displaced discs or broken vertebrae. But in reality, the pain they feel, suggests that they do not feel safe. And it is often thought to exacerbate pain. Here was born the phenomenon of the pain people feel for a long time after she had to disappear: it is not that the body is in danger, and that the brain has changed the way of information processing.
And what’s the most severe pain you experienced personally? Tell us in our chat in Telegram.