The Underestimated Source of Your Physical Pain
Many people will go to the doctor after experiencing some form of unfamiliar pain. Though, what most don’t know is that in order to fix these ailments, one must consider their past and present emotional well-being. This is important as most of the time, physical pain stems from unresolved negative emotions such as feeling abandoned or conflicted.
The idea of physical problems coming from emotional troubles birthed long ago. It was common knowledge among practitioners of the ancient arts of Chinese medicine, yoga, and ayurveda that a heart attack could be a result of anger, or dementia a product of chronic sadness. That’s why to cure someone’s knee pain or stomach disease, they attended to
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Some of my family members had a cough and they must have passed it to me because the next thing I knew I started showing symptoms similar to theirs. Unlike my mother and sisters’, these were worse than a normal cough, and after a bit of research, I learned I had bronchitis. It was one of the worst sicknesses I had ever experienced and no matter what I tried (garlic, cough medicine, pills, homeopathy, etc.), the relief was only temporary. Days, and then weeks went by trying to rid myself of this sickness, and it wasn’t until I found the true cause that I was able to fully recover. I looked in a reference guide from the book “Feelings Buried Alive… Never Died”, and some of the psychological explanations for bronchitis were: “extreme disharmony in the home” and “wanting to be able to change things, but can’t”. Reading these words did not surprise me at all as during this time there was a lot of contention in my home. My siblings were constantly fighting, my parents couldn’t agree on things and everything was very disorganized. As an emotional person, I felt the stress and chaos of our situation deeply and the weight of these feelings came to be too much. So, my body responded by afflicting itself until I did something about it. A close family friend, who also happens to be a masseuse, worked with me to resolve my emotional pain and massaged
First pain is an everyday experiences that is expressed through the use of language and is then legitimized (Waddie, 1996). If a patient as a history of depression or chronic pain they have pain every day and the concept is used to help explain their pain. As nurse we use the concept of pain to find a base line of the pain and to assess new pain. In surgical patients they may have multiple types of pain from the incision, emotional, and history. The concept educates the nurse of the different form that pain can present itself. Pain can also guide how we treat the patient. Emotional pain would not be treated with the “so know pain pills”, but with talking or listening to patient. Concept of pain also address the different form of patient and how the nurse and patient response to it. If a patient is having somatic pain from an incision the nurse could react by applying heat or ice. Pain is what the patient says it is.
What is pain? If you ask someone to tell you the definition of pain they will typically state something that hurts. Registered nurses should know the definition of pain and how it can be identified on their patients. However, Abdalrahim, Majali, Stomberg, and Bergbom (2010) propose that nurses did not receive adequate education in pain management and suggest the lack of knowledge hinders their ability to adequate control their patients’ pain. Therefore, the unethical treatment of pain can be traced back nurses.
When pain lasts three to six months or more, it is considered chronic pain. According to the American Geriatrics Association, more than 50 percent of seniors living at home and up to 80 percent of those in care facilities suffer from chronic pain. As a result, a great number of these seniors are not able to function properly during the day or sleep well at night. Some of the most frequent causes of chronic pain in seniors are arthritis, glaucoma, poor circulation, and nerve damage.
The physical aspect of pain can be healed over time, whereas the mental can’t. Mental pain require professional help in order to help cope, and in some cases mental injuries can last a lifetime. This type of pain is usually associated with emotional distress. Despite all this, pain is a survival skill that our ancestors devolved in response to the dangers they endured millions of years ago. This skill is called fight-or-flight
Pain is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that is subjective and unique to each individual. Pain is difficult to describe and often hard to measure; however, most healthcare professionals agree that pain is whatever the patient describes it to be. Pain is one of the most frequently used nursing diagnosis and is the most common problem for which patients in the clinical setting seek help (Cheng, Foster, & Huang, 2003). Unrelieved pain can have a profound impact on the lives of both the patient and his or her family members. The subjective nature of pain makes pain difficult to assess; therefore, many patients do not receive adequate relief. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
There are several assessment tools nurses use in in the field to assess geriatrics along with the rest of the population. Three most common assessment tools are, the pain scale, fall risk scale, and the depression scale.
By becoming educated on the risk factors that cause back injuries, a majority of the general population can prevent agonizing and potentially disabling pain during their lifetimes. Back injuries can occur gradually over time as a result of trauma caused by repetitive activity or can result from a single traumatic event (Back). The signs and symptoms of a back injury may include pain when trying to assume a normal posture, decreased mobility, and pain when standing from a seated position (Back). Warning signs that should cause concern may include radiating pain down a leg, numbness or loss of sensation in a leg, weakness or loss of muscular strength in a leg, constant pain in the back or leg that is not affected by motion, pain in the
Are you in pain? You’re not alone, many are in pain. It is estimated pain is the largest epidemic we face, as we spend billions on medication and surgeries. Unfortunately, these treatments are often not successful, resulting in greater cost with minimal gain.
Some point throughout our lives, we have experienced temporary pain in order to reach a more rewarding future. This pain can come in numerous forms for each individual, some physical pain, others mental or emotional pain, and some being a combination of the various types of pain. Whichever form of temporary pain an individual has, it is an obligation to be successful. I would venture to say physical pain is my dominant type of temporary pain. Temporary physical pain is something I have struggled with endless times in my softball career, just so I could play another game; this was the pain I I subjected myself to in order to keep playing the game I love. I realized after I fractured my hip during a game, too much pain took a lasting toll on my body. After the numerous doctor visits, tests, and X-rays, the doctors prescribed medication
After a car accident last year, I live in chronic pain from my back and neck on an everyday basis. I also suffer from depression that adds on to the pain that I feel. The pain that I felt was very typical these past two weeks. I have my good days and my bad days. The days that I have physical therapy, I usually hurt worse than the days that I don’t have it. I cope with the pain by taking medications and doing yoga. Nevertheless, some days I cannot get out of bed because of my back pain. These are really hard days; however, these days are becoming fewer. My family history when it comes to pain is unhealthy. A vast amount of my family members are addicted to pain medication. My family does not deal with emotions every well and most of them
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
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.
People who use medications often incorporate those drugs into their life in a variety of ways. For some, it is a life-saving that must be used in order to live. But for others, such as my informant, Amanda, some drugs that are not necessary for life have become equated as a “staple” item. Staple items by definition are “a main or important element of something, especially of a diet, such as bread, milk, etc.,” (dictionary.com). However, in her life, she has come to define the pain relieving drug, Advil, as “staple” for her health. Thus, the goal of my paper is to trace what caused Advil to become tantamount with necessary nourishment. Through the analysis of Amanda’s experience with pain, I will examine how both models of health are enacted as she takes Advil, which have come to change the biomedical intended purpose to a “staple” of life. To further my analysis, I will be referencing Joseph Dumit’s book, Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health, Mol and Law’s paper, “Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: The Example of Hypoglycemia,” and Clara Han’s chapter, “Labor Instability and Community Mental Health: The Work of Pharmaceuticals in Santiago, Chile.”
Dr. Gabor Maté is a well- known author and physician in Vancouver and writes mainly about the human body, life experiences, and illnesses. Understanding the emotional and physical connection is extremely important to our well-being. In his talk, Dr. Gabor Maté discusses the cause of hidden stress and how mental illness can direct or indirectly cause physical illness. There is a connection between stress and mind that cannot be separated, what you carry around you in your mind affects your mind and physical health entirely. Emotional stress can cause illnesses such as heart disease, dementia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, cancer, etc. Repressed anger and emotion in general, can lead to onset
In this discussion, I will be looking at the different forms of pain and how this pain is caused within the body. The number of different types of drugs used to treat pain is forever expanding but I will examine the main types of painkiller, how they were discovered and how they work to relieve the symptoms of pain.