I don't feel your pain - Ideas - The Boston Globe

IF YOU STOPPED the average person in an emergency room and asked why she's there—not just her guess at the problem, but what really motivated her to show up—the number one answer would be "pain." For all that modern medicine has learned about disease and treatment, it's alleviating pain that still lies at the heart of the profession. And in recent years, the notion of treating "pain" as its own entity has been rising to the forefront in medicine. Pain management now has its own journals, conferences, clinics, and specialists, and pain relief is sometimes referred to as a human right. The Institute of Medicine reports there are more than 100 million chronic pain sufferers in the United States, and others have estimated the problem costs $60 billion a year in lost productivity. In September, a coalition that includes the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH is expected to release a long-awaited "National Pain Strategy." But as pain rises on the agenda for clinicians and patients, research is uncovering some unsettling facts about how it really affects people. First, not everyone experiences pain similarly. In experiments, women and black people have frequently shown lower pain tolerance when asked to do things like hold their hands in ice water. Gender differences in pain prevalence and intensity emerge in adolescence, and for reasons not fully understood, women are particularly vulnerable to conditions including migraines, back pain, and fibrom...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs