Pain

Everyone knows pain. The stabbing toothache in the middle of the night. The dull pressure in the lower back after a long day. The burning in the hip with the first step out of bed. The flickering pull in the shoulder that makes you pause for a moment each time. Pain is what stops you — against your will, in the middle of your momentum.

Medicine describes pain as a warning function of the nervous system. Tissue is injured, a nerve irritated, a structure overloaded — and the brain translates these signals into a sensation you cannot ignore. That is correct. But it does not explain why some pain persists even when no tissue is injured anymore. Why some people live a lifetime in pain without any clear finding being discovered. Why one person is quickly free of pain after an operation and another is not.