Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: paul.fr on 03/05/2007 12:32:08
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when I'm having one of my clumsier than normal days, i tend to walk in to stuff and whack my arm. I have found that if i give my leg a quick whack, the arm pain goes straight away and the self inflicted leg pain only lasts seconds!
why is that?
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I suspect it is mere distraction.
Another way of looking at it is signal to noise ratio. Your arm is sending a pain signal to your brain, so when you whack your leg, you increase the sensory noise level so your brain is less able to detect the pain signal from your arm against the increased noise level from your leg.
I can only assume that the reason why the leg pain lasts less long is because when your brain senses the pain signal from your leg, it discounts it against expectation, saying I was expecting that so I don't need to listen too hard to it. On the other hand, expected pain often is heightened by expectation, but maybe your expectation is that the pain will quickly go away, and so it does so.
Pain is very much about expectation and interpretation, which is why hypnosis can be very good at suppressing pain.
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I suspect it is mere distraction.
Another way of looking at it is signal to noise ratio. Your arm is sending a pain signal to your brain, so when you whack your leg, you increase the sensory noise level so your brain is less able to detect the pain signal from your arm against the increased noise level from your leg.
I can only assume that the reason why the leg pain lasts less long is because when your brain senses the pain signal from your leg, it discounts it against expectation, saying I was expecting that so I don't need to listen too hard to it. On the other hand, expected pain often is heightened by expectation, but maybe your expectation is that the pain will quickly go away, and so it does so.
Pain is very much about expectation and interpretation, which is why hypnosis can be very good at suppressing pain.
That sort of fits with what i guessed. I was thinking that the initial pain of the arm, is negated by the sudden and sharp pain inflicted to the leg. the brain sort of forgets about the arm pain because a much stronger on has just been felt in the leg which is of more concern.......or something like that.
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I am so glad I am not the only klutz around...hehe