The Pain Is In Your Brain: Your Knees Know Next to Nothing

By HANS DUVEFELT A “frozen shoulder” can be manipulated to move freely again under general anesthesia. The medications we use to put patients to sleep for such procedures work on the brain and don’t concentrate in the shoulder joints at all. An ingrown toenail can be removed or an arthritic knee can be replaced by injecting a local anesthetic – at the base of the toe or into the spine – interrupting the connection between the body and the brain. An arthritic knuckle can stop hurting and move more freely after a steroid injection that dramatically reduces inflammation, giving lasting relief long after any local anesthetic used for the injection has worn off. The experience of pain involves a stimulus, nerve signaling and conscious interpretation. Our brains not only register the neurological messages from our sore knees, shoulders, snake bites or whatever ails us. We also interpret the context or significance of these pain signals. Giving birth to a long awaited first baby has a very different emotional significance from passing a kidney stone, for example. I have written before about how we introduce the topic of pain to our chronic pain patients in Bucksport. Professor Lorimer Moseley speaks entertainingly of he role of interpretation in acute pain and also explains the biochemical mechanisms behind chronic pain. TREATING PAIN WITH ANALGESICS Even when we are awake, we can reduce orthopedic pains with medications that work on the b...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Medical Practice Patients Physicians Primary Care Hans Duvefelt Pain Management Source Type: blogs