myrmepropagandist

Have you ever been in pain in such a way that when the pain stops the feeling of the pain being gone is almost as intense as the pain itself?

I've had this with a few things, mostly migraines, tooth aches, and one time what may have been a pinched nerve.

Maybe it's because the thing that scares me the most about pain, isn't the pain itself, which I can tolerate, I'm tough, I like to think. But, the thought of not being able to escape pain scares me.

What happens to the body when pain stops?

May 11 at 9:46amWeb
Show threadErin Jonaitis1d ago
@futurebird I'd imagine a sensory afterimage of the sort you get if you stare at something red unblinking for a minute and then look at a white wall; or do that trick where you press your arms against a doorframe for a minute and then stop. Perhaps pain-sensing neurons do something similar.
Show threadmyrmepropagandist1d ago

@emjonaitis

The mind and body must be doing things to compensate for extreme pain, and maybe for a bit you still have all of that going on, but the signal is gone.

Sometimes when I take an advil for a minor migraine and it goes away I feel a little light-headed because the pain is gone. And I think it's because I'm alway worried that a regular migraine might turn into one of the evil ones. The "real" migraines.

Show threadErin Jonaitis1d ago
@futurebird I used to get cramps bad enough to get sent home from school. I'd take Advil and a nap and when I'd wake up, I'd have this floaty feeling. Physically not unlike the arms-in-the-doorframe trick, really.
Show threadGreenbeard1d ago

@emjonaitis @futurebird

Well, intense pain causes physiological reactions. That's why when in pain we sweat, our heartbeat quickens, BP rises, and so on. So when the stressor goes away, for some time the body stays 'overclocked', which feels weird until it settles

Show threadPetra van Cronenburg1d ago

@futurebird Yes. And I always long for that moment.
Chronic or heavy pain rewires the brain in a false way. In our hospitals e.g. "pain management" is an important part of therapy: to help people not to develop a longer lasting pain. Medicaments can break it in the beginning. They say, the moment the pain installs in the brain, it gets difficult to get rid of it.

Chronic pain therapy is complicated and individual: the brain has to unlearn the feeling of pain. Rewiring ...

Show threadJessie Kirk1d ago
@futurebird Aye, when I woke up in hospital after surgery to remove my fit-to-burst apendix. A very strange feeling.
Show threadAlbert Cardona1d ago

@futurebird

The absence of pain, the cessation of pain, is a form of reward, and a powerful one, at least in associative learning. There are experimental paradigms in animal model systems where the cessation of pain acts as the reinforcer.

Goes by "pain relief learning". For example:

"‘Pain relief’ learning in fruit flies", Yarali et al. 2008 (Bertram Gerber's lab)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334720800273X

And also:

"Reinforcement signaling of punishment versus relief in fruit flies", König et al. 2018 (Yarali's lab)
https://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/25/6/247.short

"Painful events establish opponent memories: cues that precede pain are remembered negatively, whereas cues that follow pain, thus coinciding with relief are recalled positively."

#neuroscience #pain

Show threadPetra van Cronenburg1d ago
@albertcardona Fascinating. Works with the bigger fruit flies aka humans in a similar way: the therapeut tries to give you at least a short phase without pain (by medicaments etc) and then you work on reinforcing these good memories of your body (very simply spoken). @futurebird
Show thread@stevewfolds1d ago
@futurebird
I laugh at the 1-10 pain scale, hoping to be unconscious at 10. A neurosurgery post-op in ‘18 hurt too much to scream. Facing major pain again in 3-weeks when a hip joint is replaced. Ice for weeks and opiates for first few days.
Show threadkit1d ago

@futurebird
With migraines, and surgery, and some other activities yes.

Without having had chronic pain, I'm not sure how to think about being unable to escape it. So far the most whimpering have been migraines, but sometimes with floaty afterwards. One of the tattoos I clearly wasn't sane after each session, in a very floaty way.

Show threadllewelly1d ago

@futurebird the pain is over when the zombie fungus takes over.

AAt least, that's what the zombie fungus says.

Show threadmyrmepropagandist1d ago

@llewelly

I'm still thinking about how ophiocordyceps do not "take over the ants nervous system" the nervous system is the last system that the fungi consume. They seem to interact with the muscles directly.

What is that like for the ant?

Show threadllewelly1d ago
@futurebird I don't know. I can only imagine it as being a bit like dyspraxia; send the muscles the desired commands, and they do the wrong things anyway. But in my case, there's no method behind the madness of muscle dyspraxia; the muscles are just doing random idiosyncratic things, not following a plan. And eventually, their idiosyncratic actions die down and they follow orders, albeit long after normal people have given up hope in instructing me on how to do any physical thing.
Show threadPetra van Cronenburg1d ago
@futurebird This article about the ways our brain reacts to pain, could be interesting for:
https://theconversation.com/how-the-brain-can-miraculously-switch-off-pain-248333?utm_medium=article_clipboard_share&utm_source=theconversation.com
How the brain can miraculously switch off pain

Stress, exercise and even sex can reduce pain.

The Conversation
Show threadsecretsloth1d ago
@futurebird you get used to pain when it's there all the time. When it disappears, it's wonderful, of course, it's like... I almost didn't even realize how bad it was until it goes away? And then suddenly I actually have energy and my brain is less draggy and my body can move and it's almost like feeling nothing is a feeling? And it feels amazing. But really, when pain is the default, you get used to it. Not that you're wrong. It's just, we do what we have to do to adapt.
Show threadsecretsloth1d ago
@futurebird the thing that is most annoying I think is the adrenaline. A lot of the time I can't tell what hurts exactly because my body tries to mask the pain, but I get a lot of adrenaline as part of that and it makes me jittery and tense and I end up clenching my jaw, it mimics anxiety when I'm not anxious, makes me irritable and I have to be careful not to let that come out. Causes vigilance when there's really nothing about to eat me. 🙄 sigh.
Show threadRealGene ☣️1d ago

@futurebird
I had a herniated disc, which was agonizing. I had sciatic pain in my leg, which could not be resolved by changing positions, because it wasn't really in my leg at all. My foot and ankle were constant pins & needles, it felt like an animal was gnawing away at my foot.

Then one day I was walking, which was really the only relief I could get from the sciatica, when the disc popped like a bubble on an inner tube. I felt a warm, fluid-like sensation in my lower back.

Decades later, I can still remember the rush of relief that was instantaneous, and orgasmic in intensity.

Show threadMister Dave1d ago
@futurebird chronic spine here. there is definitely some kind of not-sensation that i get when I find the just-right position for what my back is doing at the moment. it's often accompanied by fatigue, or hunger, or whatever other sensation was being masked by the pain, but it's a specific thing of its own.
Show threadglasspshr14h ago
@futurebird being a Red Sox fan in the fall of 2004