Pain

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

Pain is a symptom of being hurt or sick. It is a bad sensation that is physical and emotional.

Most pain starts when part of your body is hurt. Nerves in that part send messages to your brain. Those messages tell your brain that your body is being damaged. You see that damage is happening. Pain is not just the message the nerve sends to your brain. It is the bad emotion you feel because of that damage.

The message that the nerve sends to your brain is called nociception. What you experience because of the nociception is pain.

[edit] Kinds of pain

Pain can be acute or chronic. Acute means it only happens a short time. Chronic means the pain lasts a long time.

Pain can be from different types of injury:

Cutaneous pain is from damage to the skin. This is the pain you get when you cut your finger with a knife.
Visceral pain is from damage to the organs inside your body – like the stomach, kidney, and heart. This is the pain you get when you have an ulcer.
Somatic pain is from muscles, bones, and joints. This is the pain you get when you sprain (twist) a joint like your ankle.

Pain can also happen when there is no injury happening. Pain can happen just because the nerves do not work right. This is called neuropathic pain.

[edit] Treatments for pain

For most pain, the best treatment is to stop the damage that makes the pain. If you sprain your ankle, doctors tell you not to walk on it. They tell you to put ice on it. This helps the injury stop. If you have an ulcer in your stomach, doctors stop the acid made in your stomach. This helps the ulcer to heal.

But many kinds of pain also need medicines to feel better. There are many different kinds of medicines for pain:

NSAIDs (Acronym) for Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drug. These medicines decrease the inflammation where you are hurt. They also work in the brain to decrease pain. Examples are aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen. These medicines do make you very sleepy. You do not become addicted to them. But they can cause problems with kidneys and with peptic ulcers.
Opoids are narcotic pain relievers. They do not have the kidney and stomach problems that NSAIDs have. But they can make you very sleepy. They can be addictive. They can also cause constipation (not being able to have a bowel movement and get waste out of your rectum.)
Tylenol is not a narcotic or an NSAID. So it is much safer than either one. But it is less good at stopping pain.
Anti-Seizure medicines (also called antiepileptics) – many of these medicines work for chronic neuropathic pains. Other pain medicines may not work at all for those kinds of pains. Examples are carbamazepine and gabapentin.
Anti-depression medicines can also help chronic pain, even if it is not neuropathic pain. This is partly because of an affect on pain itself. But it also helps, because living in chronic pain can make depression.