• Question: why do we feel pain

    Asked by adamrussell to Fiona, Joanna on 25 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 25 Jun 2010:

      Hi Adam, we have pain receptors on our skin that send messages to the brain. Pain receptors are actually there to protect us, so that we don’t do anything crazy that will damage our bodies. They obviously can sometimes be a bad thing too if you have an injury or something wrong as pain can be a really debilitating thing that makes you pretty miserable. There are always efforts to make better, stronger painkillers that are not harmful to the body. 🙂

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 25 Jun 2010:

      Hello again! We feel pain in order to survive in our environment – it makes us aware of damaging or harmful experiences. If we couldn’t feel pain we could burn ourselves quite badly for example and not even realise it! This could cause more serious problems or infections.

      The reason we feel pain is because we have a ‘nervous system’ which is a network of nerves that respond to things like temperature and pressure.

      Some people experience pain in the head – headache – this is slightly different because headaches are caused by inflammation in the brain. In this case blood vessels or nerves in the brain can become inflamed (swell up) and can cause pressure which is often described like a pulsing sensation. This causes pain and happens because of dehydration, stress, a virus, eye or ear problems for example.

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