Pathophysiology Of Pain

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The human body is subjected to pain every day, but the internal affects that pain causes is unknown to most. This is because Pain is rather hard to define as it's a subjective sensation, meaning it varies with each person. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines it as an "unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage" When people are subjected to pain, a large number of hormones and nerves affect different parts of the body, all sending signals to the brain where the pain is registered and then felt.
Pain is often classified by its pathophysiology into 2 major types: nociceptive and neuropathic. Potentially damaging stimuli such as pain …show more content…

This process, called nociception, is what causes the pain to be felt. Nociceptive pain involves the normal neural processing of pain that occurs when free nerve endings are activated by tissue damage or inflammation. Nociception involves the 4 processes of transduction, transmission, perception, and modulation. Transduction is the process where tissue damage releases chemical mediators that then activate nociceptors, possibly resulting in the generation of an action potential (an electrical impulse). In the second process the action potential moves from the site of injury along afferent nerve fibres to nociceptors at the spinal cord2. This process is known as transmission. The action potential is carried across the cleft dorsal horn of the spinal cord by released neurotransmitters, from where it ascends the spinothalamic tract to the thalamus and the midbrain. …show more content…

The difference between the speeds explains why when a person is first injured or subjected to pain, a sharp pain is felt, but then diffuses to a duller form of pain. This lag in time is attributable to the difference in the speeds of A delts and C fibres. This means that their messages, although sent at the same time, do not reach the brain at the same time. In other words, A delta fibred travel at the speed of a car, while C fibred carry them at the speed of a