...you don't feel pain?

You are cooking with a couple of friends. Although everybody is having a good time, talking together about an interesting topic and listen to great music in the background meanwhile, you suddenly forgot, one of the hotplates is still on and has a hot temperature.

You lean against on the hotplate to reach up some spices from the shelve above you. As soon as you touch the hotplate, you feel a stabbing pain in your hand and you automatically pull your affected hand away. Apparently, you burned your hand, and it hurts a lot. But what if you don´t feel any pain?

However, first of all, we have to make clear that pain even has a function. Your body doesn’t want to annoy you by sending the specific impulses to the affected area which causes pain. Actually, he tries to protect his body parts by damages, overload, and injuries of tissue either coursed by in and outside influences. Therefore, pain even works like a physical warning system for us.

But how do you get pain? For the mentioned example, in the beginning, the nociceptor, also known as the pain receptor, in your hand recognizes the heat of the hotplate directly and sends a signal through nerves to your central nervous system (CNS). Your spinal cord recognizes the impulse, leading to a reflex that causes an escape movement. Before you even are aware of the heat and pain, you automatically start pulling your hand away from the heat plate. Subsequently, your brain notices and processes the irritant and sends certain impulses to the affected and other body parts which affects that you notice the pain physically of the injured hand. He wants to give you the signal this kind of behavior isn´t good for your body as well as for your health.

Therefore, pain also has a learning function. Your body tries to avoid such a situation again by conditioning. Consequently, you would be more careful than before the incident and you try to keep away from such a situation again.

.Pain is subjective. Everybody feels pain differently. On the one hand, some people don´t feel much pain when they cut themself by accident and don´t even notice it. On the other hand, some people, are extremely sensitive to pain and feel pain as very uncomfortable.

So obviously pain is pretty important for us and keeps us from doing dangerous things which could be damage for our body without noticing it. But there are even people who don´t feel pain at all. The disease is called CIP: congenital insensitivity to pain. At first it sounds great, feeling no pain, but the reality is something different. You always have to be careful, that you don´t hurt your body accidentally without noticing it. The risk of a shorter life is higher because you don’t have any inhibitions and point of view of what you can damage to your body.

Another positive aspect is that you can try to do many things for example dangerous stunts without having in mind to feel pain afterwards. You would probably get a lot of attention from many people and might make you popular in school or in your environment. However, you would also damage your body through many injuries. Without learning from the experience of feeling pain, you could spend your childhood or many times of your life in a hospital or in bandages and cast but you wouldn’t know why exactly and you are not able to notice by yourself if something is wrong without any disadvantages like a disease and symptoms.

 You could go in the sun as long as you want. Although your body would be very red afterwards and you would risk skin cancer, you still don´t need to worry about awful and annoying pain anymore.

 You can avoid having chronic pain. Chronic pain is caused by long term pain longer than six months. This type of pain can continue even after an injury or illness. So even after a serious accident, you don’t need to suffer by pain.

 If we don´t feel pain anymore, we would start being more uncontrolled and risky in our behavior. For example, we would probably jump from a high spot to the ground without thinking about what kind of impacts it would have and we wouldn´t notice any injuries inside of the body which might be dangerous for us. We would still strain our body causing more injuries and the healing process would extend. Therefore, pain is also a defence mechanism for our body. Your body tries to call you attention to the string, so you will immediately try to avoid more damage to the body part by protecting it. So, the ability to feel pain is actually crucial to your survival.

In conclusion, the ability to feel no pain has some positive aspects for example you wouldn´t suffer from injuries like a sunburn or an accident anymore. However, pain can be good for you because it teaches you to avoid common threats and dangers, and not to repeat mistakes which might damage your body. But of course, not for the people who suffer from chronic pain every day.

Source:https://flexikon.doccheck.com/de/Schmerz