Word: brained
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...Neural blockade - control of the various "gateways" through which pain signals reach our brains, is next. There' s no doubt that pain is ultimately a mental phenomenon whose survival value involves some kind of negative re-enforcement; we learn not to hammer our thumbs by punishing experience. There are times when there' s more survival value in not feeling pain though, and at those times, even injured, we often don't have pain. Anyone who has seen an action movie knows we can take quite a beating yet be oblivious to pain. This is neural blockade at the highest level...
...ones who when asked "Don't you have any pain? say something like "not really but what does it matter, I still have to work to put the food on the table." I don't think it can be a central blockade because it's always there; mental or brain level suppression would be more variable...
...student under hypnosis in medical school. I told her it was a burning coal but that she couldn't move to take it off. We thought her grimacing seemed a little fake. But the very obvious inflammation of the skin touching the quarter was not. It showed that the brain's control of specific, tiny nerves - in this case the tiny blood vessels in the skin - is profound...
...pains suffered by certain peri-menopausal patients. Exercise, strangely enough, seems to have taken the place of the hormones we used to give - with nearly the same pain relief. This might be a covert form of hormonal therapy itself; the "pleasure hormones" or endorphins that are released in the brain by exercise (and eating and sex too) are potent natural pain killers...
...choosing to stay awake doesn't mean a patient is free of the risks of anesthesia. "We can get in trouble with a local anesthetic," says Zapol. "We can get in trouble with a spinal anesthetic," which keeps pain signals from getting to the brain but doesn't make the patient sleepy. "We can overdose you in all of those places." Someone, whether it's an anesthesiologist, another physician or a fully trained nurse, has to be ready to deal with that possibility. "Surgeons are experts at kidneys and ureters and coronary arteries and lungs. They're skillful people," Zapol...