What is pain?
When discussing things like painkillers many people forget about the problem these medications are aimed at: pain. Virtually all people (with a very small number of pathological exceptions) experience pain every day. It can be mild pain when grabbing a hot cup of coffee or severe headache that ruins your whole day. Yes, pain is really distracting and annoying, and many of us wish that they wouldn't feel any pain at all ever. But will it be that good and is a world completely free of pain a good world we would want to live in? As a matter of fact, the answer is negative. The pain isn't here just to distract us, it has its purpose.
What would you do without feeling any pain? Of course, it would be a more comfortable living but how can you tell that there's something wrong in your body if you don't feel any pain? How can you detect that you have a serious illness or an injury? People that happen to not feel any pain at all find it very hard to live normally in our world and risk harming themselves seriously and even killing themselves everyday. A simple thing like boiling water or taking a shower can cause serious trouble if you don't feel any pain.
Pain is our stop and warning sign that helps us maintain our bodies and restore their functions. Pain is a signal that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. It never comes on its own, as it's always caused by something else. Be it an injury or an internal illness you can feel it right away when it starts affecting your body because there's pain involved. And you start doing something to fix this condition because pain is stimulating you.
Still, there are times when such “warning signals” are just not the best thing to experience. Pain is distracting, especially if it is chronic or severe pain. It lowers your working potential and your quality of life, annoying and affecting nearly all spheres of your life. Think about how positive and happy you turn when you get tooth pain. That's why people need painkillers such as Tramadol. When you get the “message” and start doing something to treat the condition causing the pain, you want the pain to go away pretty fast. That's what analgesics are for, and that's why they get better and better with every generation developed. |
