We hear a lot about pain management, pain tolerance and how pain affects our everyday lives. It’s a fact of life for many people, and here in South Carolina at First Choice Health Care it’s something that we spend our lives battling. But the lack of pain, the inability to feel pain, is something not often discussed, and it puts an entirely new spin on the study of pain.
Congenital insensitivity to pain is an extremely rare and incurable disorder that is caused by “the mutation of one or more genes that control pain sensitivity,” according to FoxNews.com. “Later research from the University of Florida revealed in 2009 that the affected gene in her case was SCN9A, which produces the molecule that is involved in directing nerve impulses to the brain. A mutation that causes this molecule not to function leads to the inability to feel pain, but if it becomes overactive, then it leads to severe pain.”
As pain relief doctors and pain management specialists who’s main focus in life is to cure pain and allow people to get back to their normal, pain-free lives, this kind of condition is incredibly intriguing. FoxNews.com has an article this morning regarding just this issue, featuring a young lady with a very different outlook on life.
As a baby, the child never cried. As a toddler, she never complained about bumps or bruises. And as she got older, pain was just something that she didn’t even realize existed for people. Imagine that; living a perfectly healthy life, but never, ever knowing that the sensation of pain.
It was not until she completely burnt the palm of her hand after touching a pressure washer motor that her parents realized something just wasn’t right. The young girl didn’t even realize her hand had been burnt so badly.
The young lady, now 11, agreed to go through a serious of tests at the University of Florida to study her “lack of pain” condition. In one test, researchers asked her to rate the sensation of temperature. She could tell the difference between hot and cold, and yet couldn’t tell the difference between too hot or too cold, the temperatures that a person who can feel pain would normally begin to feel pain sensations.
While many of those suffering from pain would say that it’s a curse, experts in the field of pain management say it’s actually a gift. There is a reason that we feel pain in varying degrees, and for those who can’t feel pain life can become very scary.
For example, according to the FoxNews article, something as simple as a diaper rash turned severe. A nervous habit like lip chewing became a serious issue when this young girl would chew on her lip while sleeping so much so that it swelled up beyond the point of her top lip. A child who would have been able to feel pain probably would have stopped chewing when the pain began to set in.
So, is the ability to feel pain a blessing or a curse?
Tags: congenital insensitivity to pain, foxnews com, inability to feel pain, insensitivity to pain, nerve impulses, pain management specialists, pain sensitivity, pain tolerance, palm of her hand, washer motor