_{^{Managing our expectations of pain relief.}}

I was fascinated to read this article recently in The Guardian entitled “Analgesic culture: can reframing pain make it go away?”. The part in particular I found really interesting is that researchers have looked into our perceptions of pain and found that historically we now seem to be in more pain and discomfort than our parents and ancestors. The reason? Our modern lives have become so comfortable we expect our lives to be more pain free. While our ancestors, having less access to pain medication and medical insight (X rays, MRIs etc) seemed to accept that pain was part of life. In other terms it looks like the researchers were suggesting modern humans have gone a bit soft!

The main takeaway I took from reading it was that because our expectations of what medicine and the medical profession can now achieve for us regards our discomfort are so high. If those high expectations weren’t met then the pain we experienced increased. Not because the pain was any stronger but because our disappointment of not finding the expected relief made it more intense!   

_{^{Phantom limb pain!}}

There’s no doubt that pain is a very complex neurological, physiological, emotional and psychological issue. Just look at all the studies around phantom limb pain!

The article refers to reframing pain and by having a more realistic expectation of how much pain relief we can actually experience.

Imagine you believe your pain can be reduced 75% by taking a tablet. But you only experience a modest 35% reduction. You may feel emotionally short changed! I think what this article is hinting at is that this outlook or expectation will almost make your pain feel worse.

Conversely, I would posit, surely the opposite would be true. If you imagine or believe that your pain could be reduced by say 20% but you actually felt the same 35% reduction as above then this would manifest itself as you feeling much more relief.

_{^{The three glasses trick.}}

It reminds me of the old kids trick we used to do with three glasses of water, one warm, one cold and one at room temperature. If you don’t know it it goes like this. Put the three glasses in a row on a table. Put the glass with the room temperature water in the middle and the glass with the cold water to the left and the warm (not hot!) water to the right, so you have the three glasses in a row.

At the same time put your left index finger in the cold water and your right index finger in the warm water. Leave them there for a minute or so and really be aware of how cold and warm each finger is, focus your attention on how each feel, notice how cold the cold water is and how warm the warm water is.

Now take both fingers out and place them in the room temperature water in the glass in the middle. How does that feel? You’ll notice that each finger feels totally different! The finger that was in the cold water will feel much warmer. The warm water finger will feel much colder! How can this be? The water is the same temperature throughout the glass!

What’s going on is a complex physiological process to do with thermoreceptors in your fingers. The gist of it is is that your brain is using your previous experience of the temperature of the water and is now basing your current feeling of the temperature on that. So bringing this back to our perception of the pain relief we feel from our tablet. The same 35% reduction will feel either more or less effective depending on your previous expectation of how much relief you would receive.

I suffered with sciatica for 7 years and have an interest in helping people gain relief from their sciatic pain. I’m not a doctor and articles and advice given on this website should not be taken as professional medical advice.

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“When told by my GP that nothing could be done for my sciatica I doubted anything would ever help. I now lead a pain free life”!