Studies about pain tolerance.
Whenever I am having a bad day I like to do a little bit of research, try to learn something new about my condition, treatment, drug development, ect. I came across several articles about pain tolerance and well… they pissed me off.
I think pain is extremally important to study, it is also important to remember that it is subjective and cannot be accurately reproduced. A lot of the articles I was coming across summarized into one major statement: Patients with RA overemphasize their pain causing them to have an extremely low pain tolerance. They also added in that many RA patience have psychological ailments like somatic symptoms adding a layer of inconsistence to their pain levels once being treated.
Most articles were like “Pain Threshold in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Effect of Manual Oscillations” published in the Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology; A synapsis of the results reveals that statistically using a pressure algometer the pain tolerance of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients was lower than their control group.
Although heat and cold treatment is a bit different then a pressure algometer, I think it can be used here still to argue that pain should not be compared person to person.
I take extremely hot showers; my boyfriend takes extremely cold showers. To him, my showers are so hot that he feels like his skin is peeling off; I think they are very enjoyable. To me, his showers are like jumping into ice water; he thinks they are very enjoyable. It’s a simple example, but I think it still makes a point about the measuring point of nerves.
At the end of the day I don’t think I need to write a five-page paper discussing and disputing measurements of pain because I go through it every day. I think it is insulting to the RA and other chronic illness communities that our pain is not taking into full consideration. Even more so, I’m ashamed to think how much grant money is going towards those studies and not towards finding a cure or even understanding how autoimmune diseases work.
I posted some links below, including the one that I talked about above. Hopefully talking about this subject will not only make more people aware of chronic pain, but be more willing to understand it as well.
file:///C:/Users/nrael/Downloads/Dhondt%20et%20al,%20Pain%20threshold,%20Scandinavian%20Journal%20of%20Rheumatology%201999-28-2-88-93%20(2).pdf
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