Cold Pressor Experiments

The psychological processes in the article include pain perception, and how we as humans perceive pain, how we react to it, and how we adapt to it. The article explains the pain signaling process and how pain can be amplified. For example, when we get pricked by a needle, a signal from our finger ascends through the spinal cord to reach parts of the brain. From there, we perceive pain, then we form a pain experience. Pain perception can be resulting from several factors such as the frequency of pain input, how sensitive the CNS is, How the body reacts after brain perceives and tries to send information to the injured area. A pain experience is when we have the urge to put a band aid on our injury, or be scared to get pricked from a needle again. However, each pain experience differs from one culture to the other, moreover, one person to the other. The article is conducting a research paper about pain and pain perception in different ethnic groups.

Psychological factors are known to contribute to how people experience and cope with pain. However, as people age, they experience normative age-related changes in psychological functioning. Thus, much of what is known about psychology and pain may not necessarily apply to older adults, unless it has specifically been tested in older populations. This is a particularly important point, because pain remains a major problem for millions of older adults. Furthermore, it is expected that the populations of older adults in America will increase significantly in the coming years, as people are living longer now that at any other point in history. Given that psychology changes across the lifespan, and that pain is a problem in older populations, this

“Pain is much more than a physical sensation caused by a specific stimulus. An individual's perception of pain has important affective (emotional), cognitive, behavioral, and sensory components that are shaped by past experience, culture, and situational factors. The nature of the stimulus for pain can be physical, psychological, or a combination of both.” (Potter, Perry, Stockert, Hall, & Peterson, 2014 p. 141) As stated by Potter et al, the different natures of pain are dealt with differently depending on many factors. Knowing this, treating pain can be very difficult as there is no single or clear cut way of measuring it; “Even though the assessment and treatment of pain is a universally important health care issue,

Pain perception can be less than might be expected from the extent of a physical injury. This was proven by a scientist called Susana Bantick, Oxford University, and colleagues who carried out a study on the influence of attention distracting pain processing (Bantick et al, 2002). During the experiment, brain processing was measured by measuring brain activity using fMRI. Participants rated pain from 1-10 when noxious heat stimulus was applied to their hand in the scanner. She then followed the same process but gave them a task which required cognitive processing; reducing the amount of focused attention on pain. Bantick, therefore, showed attention distraction can reduce the amount of pain perceived by the individual, also pain processing to the brain was reduced. This provides vital evidence that pain perception does not just depend on the injury alone.

2005). In addition, to the questionnaire scores they also interviewed the participants to ensure that they had no physical injuries or limitations that would prevent them from submerging their hand in cold icy water. The researchers then collected four pain-related measurements derived from other studies (Hayes et al. 1999a , b; Zettle et al. 2005) during each of two presentations of the cold pressor. Then each protocol provided a rationale about pain and its management that the college participants listened to through headphones. This was done so that there would be a minimum amount of possible experimenter bias during the study. During the second experiment similar steps were taken but at the end of the experiment three additional questions were asked to evaluate what they participants may have learned. The three questions were:

Social pain is experienced after an aversive social interaction, for example, rejection or exclusion. Psychological pain is experienced as emotions following the loss of reward. The focus of this study will be pain tolerance and threshold of physical pain, however, psychological and social pain are both relevant as they are both experienced in athletics and in victims of abuse.

The application of cold can induce local hypothermia, which leads to vasoconstriction and result in reduced blood flow, inflammation and oedema (Block, 2010). This information also supports the efficacy of cold therapy as in case of bleeding, 250 ml less blood loss can be observed among patients, including Mrs Sawyer, who received cold therapy (Adie et al., 2012). The effect of the cold therapy that has been applied for a period of 15-20 minutes, can last for up to 30 minutes (Block, 2010). The improvement of pain is partially associated with the reduction of oedema and diminished nerve conduction (Block, 2010). According to Chou et al., (2016), the use of multimodal regimen to enhance pain management in line with reduced opioid consumption is strongly recommended. Chou et al., (2016), also explained and compered the efficacy of different physical modalities including

According to John Hopkins Medicine (n.d.), pain is an uncomfortable feeling that tells you something may be wrong. It can be fixed, throbbing, stabbing, aching, pinching, or described in many other ways. Pain is categorized as either acute or chronic. Acute pain is usually severe and brief, and is often a signal that your body has been injured. Chronic pain can vary from mild to severe and is there for long periods of time (John Hopkins Medicine, n.d). This paper will discuss a scenario that entails which person is experiencing the most pain, how two people can have the same procedure experience different levels of pain, factors that contribute to each person’s pain level, and two complementary/alternative methods of pain control.

‘Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage’ (International association for the study of pain 2014). Pain can be made up of complex and subjective experiences. The experience of pain is highly personal and private, and can not be directly observed or measured from one person to the next (Mac Lellan 2006). According to the agency for health care policy and research 1992, an individuals self-report of pain is the most reliable indicator of its presence. This is also supported by Mc Caffery’s definition in 1972, when he said ‘Pain is whatever the experiencing patient says it is, existing whenever he says it does’.

When talking about changes in pain perception many things come to mind but some of the main factors that affect how we perceive pain is gender and culture. A person's gender has a lot to do with how we perceive pain. Many people believe that pain affects both male and females differently. Pain is the emotional and sensory discomfort, when something is wrong. Whether it be age, gender or cultural background everyone has experienced with some kind of pain in their life. Men and women differ in the types of pain that they experience and reactions to pain, women have a lower tolerance for pain than men. According to CDC health statistics 2014, women are more likely to experience pain than men. Other researchers stated that the difference in pain

University of Colorado Boulder did a study where they picked sixty volunteers ages 18-55 to test how social interaction could sway how pain was described by volunteers (Koban & Wager, 2015). People are often influenced by the individuals around them, typically their actions impact another’s actions. This study wanted to know if a person close to you could alter the feeling of pain and your response to the pain. The methodology they used to test this idea was in laboratory setting they used a heat stimuli on the volunteers. Volunteers had three temperatures at different levels directed to them in six areas on the palm side of the forearm. Volunteers job was to rate the pain from the heat stimuli from 0-100 (Koban & Wager, 2015). The goal

Pain is something that connects all of us. From birth to death we can identify with each other the idea and arguably the perception of it. We all know we experience it, but what is more important is how we all perceive it. It is known that there are people out there with a ‘high’ pain tolerance and there are also ones out there with a ‘low’ pain tolerance, but what is different between them? We also know that pain is an objective response to certain stimuli, there are neurons that sense and feel pain and there are nerve impulses that send these “painful” messages to the brain. What we don’t know is where the pain

For five of the subjects discomfort increased reaction times, while for three discomfort decreased reaction times. This seems like slight support for the hypothesis but in reality it is probably statistically insignificant as will be tested next.

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (1979). Pain is actually the culprit behind warranting a visit to a physician office for many people (Besson, 1999). Notoriously unpleasant, pain could also pose a threat as both a psychological and economic burden (Phillips, 2006). Sometimes pain does happen without any damage of tissue or any likely diseased state. The reasons for such pain are poorly understood and the term used to describe such type of pain is “psychogenic pain”. Also, the loss of productivity and daily activity due to pain is also significant. Pain engulfs a trillion dollars of GDP for lost work time and disability payments (Melnikova, 2010). Untreated pain not only impacts a person suffering from pain but also impacts their whole family. A person’s quality of life is negatively impacted by pain and it diminishes their ability to concentrate, work, exercise, socialize, perform daily routines, and sleep. All of these negative impacts ultimately lead to much more severe behavioral effects such as depression, aggression, mood alterations, isolation, and loss of self-esteem, which pose a great threat to human society.

By the year 2050, the amount of elderly people will be tripled in size (Fejer). Because of this, there will be a large in increase in the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders among the elderly population. Musculoskeletal pain is very common among the elderly population and it affects every second or third elderly person. The severity of the musculoskeletal pain can vary and therefore so does the level of pain that one can experience. Between men and women, women are more reporting