Pain in General Explained

Pain is both a physical and emotional experience, much more than just the body’s nerve response to an injury or a change in a function of the body. Pain is a complex experience that is very personal (and sometimes isolated) for the individual person. It is invariably influenced by a person’s beliefs, culture, ideas, fears and feelings.
For the last 20 years or so, the concept of pain has been recognised as being what a person says it is, existing when they say it does and being as painful as they say they feel it. How an individual person views different types of pain will alter the way they react to that pain, and ultimately affect how they will feel about that pain after the experience.
Pain is transmitted to the brain by sensory nerve fibres. These nerves relay ’sensation’ information (such as touch, heat, cold, sexual arousal, pressure and pain) from our bodies to our spinal cords and then on to our brains for interpretation.

 The Gate Control Theory

The ‘Gate Control Theory’ remains one of the most respected understandings of one way our bodies can diminish the perception of pain.
The gate control theory is based on the fact that when the larger skin nerves (that sense touch, heat, cold and pressure) are stimulated, they are capable of overriding the smaller nerve fibres that sense the sharp, burning or aching pains. The larger nerve fibres carry the ’sensory message’ to the spinal cord more rapidly and get priority, shutting ‘the gate’ as it were, to the pain messages being carried by the smaller fibres.

If the pain intensifies to a higher level the ‘gate’ can be pushed back open to a degree, making the pain sensation felt more intensely.This is the reasoning behind our natural instinct to ‘rub’ or massage our bodies when we hurt ourselves.

It is also the reason why natural therapies such as massage, cold or heat packs can alter the conscious pain sensation felt by a woman in labour, changing or modifying, the pain she experiences.

Other ways to stimulate the gate control is by changing position, walking, rocking, stomping and pelvic rocking. These movements activate receptors in the woman’s joints to help diminish pain.As the labour progresses and intensifies, methods using the ‘gate control’ can become less effective as the gate is ‘pushed back’ to a degree.

This is particularly so as the woman reaches the transitional phase of the 1st stage of labour, just before it is time to push. But remember those hormones!