Last updated: Tue, Jul 9, 2024
This page is incomplete. It displays memoes and/or notes.
The question of proportionality in light of brain processing of pain
If the amount of pain signals the rate of tissue damage, as Guyton and Hall suggest, how can extent of physiological damage and amount of pain be expected to correlate?
Hangartner, Ross, "Personal note", Anon, 2015
[New introduction 2008] Chronic pain is the most challenging type of pain. When it follows an earlier injury, it is out of proportion to the injury or other pathology, and persists long after healing is complete. [They talk about healing, then reorganization of scar tissue, I wonder how long that takes?] The traditional....
Melzack, R. and Wall, P. D., "The Challenge of Pain (Reprint of 1988 edition)", Penguin Books, 2008, xii
Those who have experienced the passing of a kidney stone describe it as painful beyond any expectation that pain can reach such an intensity. [The kidney stones move down the ureter through peristalsis and are ejected.]...The reason for describing this condition here is that in mechanical terms it is a rather trivial ev....
Melzack, R. and Wall, P. D., "The Challenge of Pain (Reprint of 1988 edition)", Penguin Books, 2008, 9-10
Studies of mechanical and heat hyperalgesic behavior in rats have shown that tissue injury, injection of the bacterial cell wall endotoxin lipopolysaccharide, or injection of the plant polysaccharide carrageenan generates tissue inflammation and sensitization of nociceptors (Fig. 13-4).
McMahon, S. B., Koltzenberg, M., Tracy, I., and Turk, D. C., "Wall and Melzack's Textbook of Pain", Elsevier Saunders, 2013, 202
End of included memoes/notes
The amount of pain experienced is often apparently out of proportion to the cause. An example of this is the passing of a kidney stone. The stone is often quite small, yet the pain is frequently beyond all expectation of how severe a pain can be. Yet the ureter, through which the stone passes, is poorly innervated.