Pain can have many facets: Chronic or acute. Severe and paralysing, or milder and dragging. Headache or stomach pain ... But what actually is pain and where does the feeling of pain in the body come from?

Pain is an important warning sign that draws attention to problems in the body. The official definition of pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage”. Pain is triggered by receptors in the nerve cells that are found throughout the body and can detect influences that are harmful to the body. These influences or stimuli are then transmitted through the spinal cord to the brain where there is a site corresponding to each region of the human body. When one of these regions in the brain is activated the pain is immediately felt at the relevant point in the body. This process takes a fraction of a second.

Pain is intensified, if necessary, by various pain messengers. These are substances that include, for example, prostaglandins. Production of these prostaglandins in the body can be inhibited using painkillers, which alleviates the pain.