Does Your Brain Really Feel No Pain?

Human body that makes our lives so easy, helps us in experiencing different things like joy, pleasure, and sometimes pain. Yes, you read it right! Our human body helps us in experiencing pain as well.

Whenever we get hurt by something, we get a sensation of pain. If any organ of our body does not function right, we feel pain in that part of our body, or sometimes, even in the whole body as well. Pain is an experience that we get when any unpleasant stimuli activates our sensory nerve fibres. While experiencing pain, the feeling is very unpleasant.

This Story also Contains

1. The Multitasking Receptors
2. Does Our Brain Feel Pain?
3. Throbbing Headaches And Brain Freeze
4. Inflammation In The Brain

Suppose you fall while walking. Now, what will you feel? You can feel anything, you can feel pain or a backache, or a knee ache, or pain in the area of the body that got hurt because of this incident.

But as we know, the human body is designed in such a way that it has something special for each body activity and function. Similarly, our human body has receptors. Do you know what receptors are? Do you know what their function is?

The Multitasking Receptors

Receptors are a special class of protein that can detect the presence of any kind of stimuli, and in turn, these receptors help us to create a response to the stimuli.

Receptors are of various types and are classified in many ways. In some places, receptors get into a form of mass-like structure to form a sense organ like the eye or ear. On the other hand, receptors are scattered in our body like skin and viscera.

We should thank these multi-tasking receptors as they give us the senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. Not only this, but our receptors also give us the feeling of pain in any area.

Whenever we get hurt or injured or any of our body organs do not function right, or any inflammation happens in any part or organ of a body, we feel pain in that area because of these receptors.

We can feel pain in different organs of our body like the stomach, eyes, ears, nose, and so on. But have you ever felt pain in the brain? When we say pain in the brain, don’t get confused with a headache because those are two different things. Can you think of an instance where you have felt pain in the brain like we feel the pain in our stomach or kidney? No, right?

Are you wondering why you have never thought about this before? Now the question that comes forth is, does our brain feel any pain at all? Well, in this article we are going to ponder on this same question.

Does Our Brain Feel Pain?

Well, to our surprise, the brain itself feels no pain. Yes, you heard that right! Our brain, which is responsible for controlling all functions of our body, does not feel pain. So, if the other body organs can feel pain, then why does our brain not feel pain? The answer is simple. Our body has specialised receptors in it which give the feeling or sensation of pain. These receptors are known as nociceptors.

The reason that our brain cannot feel pain is that it does not have nociceptors. The absence of these receptors is really the reason why our brain does not feel any pain.

So, does that mean our brain has no receptors at all? No, saying that there are no receptors at all would be wrong. The outer covering of the brain, i.e. the meninges consist of receptors. Due to the presence of receptors in this part of our brain, our neck muscles, blood vessels, and nerve tissues can perceive pain.

Now, you must be thinking that if your brain cannot sense pain, then, how do you get headaches? Let’s understand that!

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Throbbing Headaches And Brain Freeze

Given the fact above that our brain has no receptors, a question arises, if the brain has no receptors, then, why do we get headaches or brain freezes?

Well, as we just discussed, not the brain, but the other structures in the head have receptors in them, so any inflammation or problem in these structures causes headaches. Although it may feel like the pain is in the brain, the headaches don’t really originate from the brain.

Headaches tackled, let’s move on to brain freeze. What is brain freeze? Have you ever experienced them? Is brain freeze and pain in your brain the same thing?

No, a brain freeze is not a pain in the brain. It is nothing but just an ice cream headache. It usually happens when we eat something cold, too quickly like for instance when you eat ice cream. This is the reason that we call brain freeze, ice cream headaches.

When we eat \something cold too fast, there is a sudden change in blood flow in the veins that are located between the back of the throat and the brain. This sudden change causes brain freeze which feels like a headache, but again it’s not a brain pain.

Inflammation In The Brain

At the beginning of this article, we discussed that any inflammation or problem in any region of the body can be identified because of pain in that region. Like pain in the knee, eye, ear, etc. but, if the brain gets inflamed, how do we get to know about that?

Well, the brain has its way of showing any kind of dysfunction that it is experiencing because of inflammation. If the brain is not working as it should, then we may start facing brain fog, lack of concentration, anxiety, depression, and we might become attention deficit, etc.

So, this is how we can see the inflammation in the brain.

To conclude, the brain is the only organ that feels no pain because it does not have nociceptors in it. We confuse headaches with brain pain, but they are not the same. The brain does not feel pain when it is inflamed, it experiences symptoms like anxiety, depression, attention deficiency, brain fog, and so on.

Experts prescribe anti-inflammatories to reduce inflammation, but leading a healthy lifestyle and making healthy choices can help in reducing inflammation and living a healthy life.

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