People wake up with her in the morning and fall asleep in the evening: a huge number of women and men all over the world suffer from chronic pain, only in Europe there are about 85 million of them. From year to year tens of thousands take their lives, unable to withstand such torment. Millions of people suffer from chronic pain and hope only for a miracle. However, there are exits from such a devilish circle – one of them is called hypnosis. It is used by doctors; however, you can learn it yourself.
Today, pain is becoming an independent disease. Women are almost twice as likely to suffer from persistent pain.
Is it inevitable? Is it possible to conquer pain, or at least reduce it? Why does a woman walk on hot coals and feel nothing, while a strong man faints when blood is taken from his finger? How does a fakir feel on a bed studded with nails no worse than a European on his soft sofa? Which gives scientists reason to assert that they can objectively measure the intensity of pain on a dol-scale (from the Latin dolor – pain) of 1-10 dollars (loss of consciousness from pain), if during a flogging one person almost loses his mind from fear and pain, and the other, on the contrary, is experiencing sexual arousal?
Today, pain is becoming an independent disease. Women are almost twice as likely to suffer from persistent pain.
Childhood memory
Questions, questions, questions … They say that pain is not just pain. What we perceive as desire, pain, trance, or ecstasy, our brain builds from a relatively small number of biochemical building blocks and neurological connections. And what in one case is annoying, for example, a long motionless posture, in another, it promotes meditation. So it’s not surprising if sex drive and pain are not formed by direct stimuli of the senses, but are modulated under the influence of mental processes and cultural traditions. Behind them are the learning processes of the human mind that influence pain tolerance. Much depends on the upbringing received in childhood, as in mastering the native language. So, Wolf Schiefenhevel from the Institute for the Study of Behavior. Max Planck in Andechs, Upper Bavaria, established during an expedition to New Guinea, where he lived in the primitive Eipo tribe, that these people “can endure much more severe pain than Europeans.” For example, even a 10-year-old child endures it with stoic courage when a wooden stick is pierced through his nasal septum or earlobes.
Maybe the future belongs to this? And then spirit, will and mental training will overcome any or almost any pain? However, everything is not so simple here either – real physical pain changes the mind so much that it overrides all other sensations. Methods such as positron emission tomography (PET), which make metabolic processes visible in the brain.
Interference in consciousness proves that pain impulses, like radio interference, intrude into neural connections responsible for muscle coordination, feelings and intellectual focus. Beginning with a certain intensity, prolonged agony overlaps all other brain functions and changes the whole person.
Pain tolerance depends on custom and upbringing. Primitive peoples often have a much higher pain threshold than Europeans, although …
… Europeans also manage to walk on burning coals, as the ash reliably insulates the hot coals.
Types of pain
Modern physicians have accurately studied all neurological processes in the body; they distinguish between “good” and “bad” pain. Sharp “good” pain is a vital warning signal, such as when a child grabs a hot pan or an adult hits himself on the finger with a hammer. People who, due to a rare hereditary disorder, Riley-Day syndrome, do not perceive pain at all, are constantly at risk because they do not have such alarms.
“Bad”, chronic pain can torment a person throughout his life – and at the same time absolutely without any reason, since the actual cause has long been eliminated. Chronic pain occurs when acute pain cannot be relieved sufficiently. The nerve cells of the spinal cord, which are constantly bombarded with pain attacks, change the activity of their genes and their metabolism. As a result, they react more and more painfully to stimuli, and the pain becomes chronic. Then neurologists talk about pain memory.
The goal of the conscientious healthcare professional is to conquer “bad” pain without turning off sensitivity to “good” pain. “All chronic pain was once acute,” says Walter Zieglgensberger of the Institute of Psychiatry. Max Planck in Munich. Even in the operating room, you can avoid the transformation of “good” pain into “bad”.
“Patients should insist not only on receiving general anesthesia during the operation, but also on suppressing the spread of painful impulses to the spinal cord by local anesthesia of the operated area,” the pain specialist advises.
Pain risk during surgery
After all, general anesthesia immerses only the patient’s consciousness into deep sleep. The nerve cells in the spinal cord remain awake; they perceive pain impulses from the surgical wound and transmit them further. Local anesthesia and sufficient postoperative pain relief will ensure that no pain impulses reach the spine, as postoperative pain is often a prelude to lifelong pain.
In the fight against pain, doctors were not afraid to take even great risks. Already in the Middle Ages, a chisel and a hammer were used to open the skull. (Figure 13th century, Trinity College, Cambridge, England)
The bad news is that patients suffering from chronic pain are often not taken seriously – neither by their environment, nor by doctors, who are often powerless against pain.
A good doctor, as a rule, does not prescribe pills to his patient right away, but first thoroughly examines him. He will turn out to be a bad doctor if he does not find out the cause of the pain, but only prescribes pain relievers. A conscientious physician will certainly involve the necessary specialists in research to help cope with the root cause of pain. Unfortunately, in reality, everything looks different: usually patients wander from doctor to doctor, and this can go on for years, until they accidentally fall into good hands!
In many cases, chronic pain has no physical cause. Then we are talking about psychogenic pain caused by mental problems. For example, there are people who react to the death of a loved one with persistent headaches. Psychogenic pain is not a simulation or a figment of the imagination, it is just as real and painful as, for example, back pain due to a worn intervertebral disc.
Why does something that no longer hurts?
“My severed leg aches-to-be rain.” Such a strange phrase speaks of the suffering that 50-80% of all people who have undergone an amputation of limbs experience. It gives some idea of a phenomenon that is hardly understood by other people and before which medicine is still quite helpless.
Phantom pain is a very real sensation of pain in a severed limb, which in essence cannot be. For example, paralyzed people with a transverse spinal cord injury say that it seems to them that their legs, unable to move, are pedaling a bicycle, and that they suffer from severe physical fatigue.
Phantom pain is explained by the fact that those nerve fibers that are responsible for the sensation of an amputated limb are still stored in the main nerve. When uninsulated nerves in the cult are irritated, sensations are evoked and transmitted to the brain, and from there they are “projected” by the brain onto the missing parts of the body. A large number of treatments for phantom pain speaks of the impotence of medicine.
With phantom pain, they try to cover up their symptoms with other irritants.
Dangerous medicines
Most often, pain is dealt with with medication. But here you need to be careful: although pain relievers act rather quickly, they do not cure, and almost all of them have unwanted side effects. Many can even cause addiction similar to drug addiction. Along with physical changes, these drugs also affect the patient’s social behavior, dull his consciousness, cause indifference and apathy.
In addition, there are now many physical methods of dealing with pain; they are partly borrowed from old home remedies and traditional medicine. These are gymnastics and massage, cold and warm, dry and wet compresses, electrical stimuli, and in severe cases – operations in which part of the nerve fibers is cut so that pain impulses no longer enter the brain. In a milder version, the nerve fibers are not destroyed, and in them electrical or mechanical stimulation is opposed to pain.
Such neurostimulation is possible both in the spinal cord and in the brain. To do this, neurosurgeons implant an electrode that sends constant irritation. At the same time, a neuro-rhythm driver is implanted under the patient’s abdominal wall and connected to an electrode. The device is capable of functioning for 3-6 years.
Alternative medicine and psychotherapy, such as hypnosis, behavioral therapy, and relaxation techniques such as yoga, autogenic training, and meditation, have made striking advances in the fight against chronic pain.
Music therapy
Music therapy is also successfully trying to break through the closed circle of chronic pain. Numerous studies confirm that harmonic sounds are amazingly helpful in providing patients with moments of happiness and significantly reduce the dose of pain relievers they usually take. That which has been practiced for thousands of years by many nations and which David skillfully used when playing the harp in front of King Saul – the pain relieving effect of the rhythm – is now rapidly gaining popularity for the treatment of pain. Alternative medicine has also made strides. It is characteristic of all methods of treatment with natural remedies that they work according to a holistic principle, i.e. they treat a person as a whole, and not just his individual organ.
More and more dentists are offering hypnosis treatments. In this case, the pulse remains calm, and the pressure is low. Deep breathing with the diaphragm gives the body a warm and heavy feeling, all muscles relax.
Acupuncture, acupressure, and reflex zone therapy have become especially popular, based on traditional Chinese medicine with its opposite, but complementary life principles of yin and yang, on which the way the vital energy of qi flows through the body depends. When the harmony between yin and yang is disturbed, diseases develop in the body. Since the vital energy qi flows through the body through certain channels, the so-called meridians, by influencing these meridians, you can restore the balance between yin and yang.
Dots and needles
In acupuncture for this purpose, thin needles are stuck at specific points on the meridians. Each point is associated with some organ that it affects. With acupressure, the same result is achieved by pressing on such points, with reflexology of the foot – through the treatment of the meridian on the foot. The success in dealing with pain is sometimes astounding.
Indian Ayurveda and yoga, European homeopathy are also bringing impressive results, and yoga and homeopathy are now recognized by even the most inveterate skeptics.
Hypnosis opens up new and promising prospects. This does not mean a circus trick, in which a person is supposedly deprived of his own will in the arena, but the scientific and controlled use of hypnosis in the fight against pain, for example, at the dentist or during operations.
“Pain management is one area of medicine where hypnosis is particularly beneficial,” says Dr. Dirk Revenstorf, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Tübingen. Across Europe, more and more dentists are putting patients, at their request, into a state of hypnosis.
Pain researchers have found that people with chronic pain significantly improve their condition after six months of music therapy.
The brain works differently
Why, under hypnosis, a tooth drills without pain, and childbirth is easier, researchers from the pain laboratory at the University of Tübingen have found out. They used electroencephalograms and positron emission tomography images of the brain. Studies have shown that although painful irritation reaches the brain in a trance state, it is processed differently. It is perceived not as unpleasant, but as neutral. For such irritation to be perceived as pain, other parts of the brain must be connected – namely, this habitual process does not occur under hypnosis.
Hypnosis affects 90% of the population, especially people with good concentration and vivid imagination. It begins with soothing monotonous words, with fixing attention on an object, such as a pendulum, or with slow counting. With all techniques, the patient’s attention is directed to a specific focus point.
Hypnosis does not deprive you of will
Contrary to the prejudices prevailing earlier, hypnosis does not deprive a person of will, the patient retains control over his actions. The hypnotist can only activate what is in the personality – albeit in a suppressed form. The patient will only say what he really wanted to say. Complete relief from pain is achieved only in 10% of the population, in those who are able to achieve a state of deep trance. However, 80% of the population may experience significant pain relief. Typically, under hypnosis, a quarter of the usual dose of local anesthetic appears to be sufficient to achieve complete relief from pain.
Just like a dentist, hypnosis is also applicable for long-term pain conditions. Self -hypnosis can bring relief here . “Anyone can learn self-hypnosis,” says Professor Revenstorf. “To do this, you need to revive in memory the once-experienced pleasant feelings, joyful pictures that will counteract pain.”
So, after all, there is a remedy that will help people suffering from pain to gain the upper hand over their illness? With the help of self-hypnosis, any person gets the opportunity to manage their own pain.
