explain
pain
section
2
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Introduction
Your remarkable danger alarm system
Over thousands of years we have evolved a
remarkable sensory system that is constantly
detecting even small changes in the body and
telling the brain about them. Almost always, the
brain responds without it ever reaching our
consciousness.
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One component of this
sensory system is the danger alarm system – a
highly sophisticated system that detects changes
that are big enough to be dangerous. This is
how our brain is warned. It will tell the brain
where in our body the danger is. It will tell us
about the amount of danger and the nature of
the danger (eg. a burn compared to a pinch).
Be grateful for your alarm system. Some
diseases and injuriesmay involve faulty alarm
systems (eg. diabetes and some forms of
whiplash). The ramifications of this can be
huge, for example in leprosy, which is famous
for gangrene, limb loss and deformity, there is
actually a failure of the alarm system.
There are rare cases of people bornwith a
faulty danger detection system. This is amajor
problem because they don’t feel painwhen their
bodies are truly in danger.
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Life threatening
situations such as acute appendicitismay not
be detected and these rare cases remind us that
despite pain being often nasty, we all need a
pain system.
The alarm system has great back-up systems.
Vision, smell, hearing and taste all combine to
keep the body from self-destruction. One of the
main advantages that humans have over the
rest of the animal kingdom is that we can
predict the future. We canuse ourmemories and
reasoning ability to avoid danger before it
happens. It’s a toughworld out there and our
bodies are trying to help us asmuch as they can.
