PAIN: A COMPLEX PHENOMENON (PART 3)
Unrelenting chronic pain increases the area that body part(s) occupy on the cerebral cortex. You have more attention units giving credence to its importance so it becomes larger. The problem with that is that it has overrun other zones, other body structures, with the information of PAIN. Now you may start feeling pain in areas of the body that were never injured! Imagine that. Pain can also be augmented as it courses the spinal cord on way to the brain. There are different speed nerve fibers for different types of pain. Sometime with chronic pain the dull ache-type pain can jump tracks so it is then transmitted on a high intense nerve fiber making the pain now seem unbearable.