Pain Perception Essay Research Paper The perception

Pain Perception Essay, Research Paper

The perception of pain sensation is a combination of psychological and biological components intertwined. Pain is a part of life, and like many of life situations people do not share the same perceptions, especially relating to pain. experiences relating to pain. Pain can occur by a stimulus and often is influenced by emotions, stress, tissue damage, medical history and even gender. Gender has been one of the major differences in the effects of pain thresholds. Pain is normal and even natural. It is important to inform and learn from. Biological factors in pain perception are a part in everyday life. A hypothetical example to illustrate this could be if a person drops a heavy object on their toe, nociceptors will respond to the intense pressure sending information to surrounding cells. Once the cells link the sensation to the neural circuit of the spinal region information reaches the brain to explain why the toe is in pain. Psychological factors are very different; the amount pressure from the object dropped may be interrupted by the level of anxiety or stress a person is feeling or by the previous emotional history. Researchers intrigued with this subject have performed several experiments on people to find out a person s threshold for pain, among which have been electric shock, thermal testing and various extensive questionnaires. Results show differences male and female subjects pain thresholds.

Research supporting biological evidence fitting human sex differences in pain thresholds concludes that males have a higher tolerance for pain. Researchers at the University of Georgia performed a thermal test on 18 men and 24 women all health in their early 20 s. They were asked questions about their pain and medical history then were administered the cold pressor test. Then asks the subject to submerge their dominant foot into an ice bath between 0 a- 4 aC for 2 minutes. The experimenter asked the participant to rate the pain aloud on a scale from 0, meaning no pain at all to 11, unbearable pain. The results showed women to have higher rates of pain intensity, pain frequency, and higher blood pressure than the men participants. The researchers found that in their reports women had more of a history of using analgesics and in general more pain episodes in their daily life. (Allan, 2000) Evidence of this higher sensitivity in women is explained somewhat by the increased reactivity of the hypothalamus-pituitary gland. The hypothalamus is responsible for muscle contraction, autonomic function, nerve activity, hormone secretion, emotional drives, behavioral drives, regulation in body temperature and coordination between voluntary and autonomic functions. (Martini, 1998) Because of such high responsiveness in females, researchers believe growth hormones, prolactin, ACTH, and corticosterone are released in greater amounts. (Menetry, 1997) With all this information presented from the effects of the hypothalamus its no wonder women are more sensitive to pain. When hormone levels are not stable pain symptoms are perceived more drastically.

In another study performed at the University of Marburg, Germany researchers found that women have a higher risk of suffering from pain more than men due to differences in the balance of pain excitatory and pain inhibitory processes. In Berkley s study he argues that the pain system is homeostatic, meaning pain has relatively constant internal environment within the body. (Martini, 1998) The excitatory activity should balance the inhibitory activity pain signals, according to his evidence. Examples in the adaptation levels in which a person perceives pain after a preceding strong noxious stimulus were more intense than after preceding a weak one. (Lautenbacher, 1997) Another way he evaluated his work is by diffusing the noxious inhibitory control, meaning he was testing how sustained pain can weaken other pains in the body. He found out that the more pain is reduced and controlled in the past the more pain a person could feel in the long run. (Lautenbacher, 1997) Its sort of like taking antibiotics, if every time a person gets sick and takes a medication the less likely that person is to feel well without the use of medication each time they are ill. Medications can be less effective when administered so often because people build tolerance to them and the same is somewhat true for pain. Although he could not find a specific biological proof, it is clearly observed that not all excitatory activity is balanced out by inhibitory activity. He concludes that maybe women have more powerful inhibitory systems to allow such a difference between the sexes.

At the University of Degli Studi in Milan, Italy cardiovascular specialists came up with some requirements for a biological hypothesis concerning pain perception between genders. Focusing on the differences between the sensibilities of cutaneous and visceral tissues they concluded that visceral nociceptive sensations comes from intensity not from specific mechanisms. (Menetray, 1997) The viscerosensory system is responsible for monitoring internal organs by receptors surrounding them to interrupt information. (Martini, 1998) Affirming or denying the existence of a peripheral neural channel specifically transmitting the algogenic code responsible for visceral pain can be based on physiological data on urine samples, tests on reproductive organs and car