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The human body is a funny thing. You can feel great in one period of time and be suffering pain in the next. I am not talking about disease, just those nagging pains that effect all of us at one time or another. An act as simple as bending down to tie a shoe lace can put one's back out of whack for several weeks or months and the only true cure is rest. But most of us don't have the luxury of being able to rest for months,so we trudge to work in a slightly bent position and everyone there comes up to us and asks if everything is alright. Now I appreciate the inquiry as much as anyone else, but after a week or so, you have to admit, it really starts to get annoying. What is really annoying are those people that keep coming up to you and telling you that you should go to the doctor, chiropractor, therapist, etc. I bent down one day to also tie my shoe lace and heard this awful cracking sound. I got up and forgot about it, but the next day I couldn't straighten up. It took me three months to get back to myself. But why does this happen to us? What is the cause, why do we feel the pain?

I am not a doctor, but I do know that the human body is full of pain receptors. Scientists have been working on the cause of pain for many years and things are just beginning to get clear. Pain is not only caused by activating pain receptors but by special pathways and even chemicals in the body. The ancient Greeks thought that they had figured pain out. They believed that pain was just another emotion. The body has certain areas that only send pain signals to the brain when the stimulation is very strong. But pain is not treated equally by the sexes. Women seem to be able to endure some types of pain better than men, this may be because nature has prepared them for child birth. Men on the other hand, have a culture of not showing that they are in pain because it is not the manly thing to do. Men are also expected to function while suffering pain. A soldier may be wounded but in some circumstances he may still be expected to fight.

Some religions believe that suffering is good and we should offer up the pain to God. Because of this belief people whipped and cut themselves in ancient times believing that they were showing God how much they loved him. Even in this present day and age there are people that allow themselves to suffer the pain of crucifixion in the name of God. I am the last one to criticize anyone's religion but I must admit I think this is going way too far. For all those people that think that pain is good, there are many more that believe that people that are not of the same religion should be tortured and killed. They inflict pain on others for the sheer enjoyment of watching others squirm under the searing pain of hot irons, whips and cutting instruments. Man is not alone in feeling pain. We can be sure that the higher animals also feel it, as experienced by their squeals and cries when they are hurt. There is no way to know if such lower animals such as clams or even worms feel anything at all.

Body pain has brought about many different theories, but I think one of the most bizarre is a theory that states that our body is always in constant pain but we are used to the everyday pains and don't even notice them. It is the unusual or unique pain that truly gets our attention. To try and prove this theory the doctor goes on to state that millions of cells die in our bodies every day but we don't even notice this, yet bang your arm and kill a lot of cells at once and you get a bruise and feel pain. The reason for the pain is not the bang but the fact of greater than normal cell death.

Well the theory is interesting and could be right, but I have a hunch that trauma plays a bigger part in pain than the theory provides for. Speaking about trauma, it seems that some people are more sensitive to pain than others. Research has shown that at least one type of gene is responsible for pain sensitivity and there may be others. As a matter of fact if a low pain sensitivity gene was present, then certain disorders never even developed. Genes determine not only pain sensitivity but determine if we are going to develop a chronic pain disorder. Other factors may also effect how we feel pain and one of these can be physiological. There are many cases where people believe that they are in pain, and feel pain, but there is no cause for pain. Unfortunately for us, some doctors over use this diagnosis and tell people who are really in physical pain that it is only in their minds.

Doesn't it seem that when you get tests at the doctor's office that the inventors of the tests never considered the fact that these tests might be painful or just didn't care? It also seems that many tests could be given in a less painful manner? I am not particularly bothered by needles, having served in the US Army, but why are doctors still using the hypodermic needle? Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood invented the modern syringe in 1853. We have been using this ancient piece of equipment for over 150 years. Other devices have been invented for administering injections like the air pressure injection system which uses air to push the drug through the skin and the patch which allows the body to absorb the medicine. Why haven't we been able to replace the hypo with something better? This is only one example of something that is painful to some, but there are many medical procedures out there that are painful.

We have mentioned people that think pain is holy and others that think people of a religion other than their own should suffer. But there are and were those that just didn't care how much someone suffered. They might not have enjoyed it, but they looked upon the subject as less than human. One group was the NAZI doctors in the concentration camps in World War II and another group was the Japanese doctors who experimented on the Chinese. As far as these two groups were concerned, the subject's suffering meant absolutely nothing to them.

There we have it in a nut shell. Pain was always with the human race and most likely will always be. Even if we invent a cure for pain, there will be those that torture their fellow man for various reasons. In the years that follow we will probably get to understand pain much better and maybe even use this knowledge in ways that we haven't thought of yet.