At the most basic level, what exactly is pain and why do we feel it?
This is today's random question.
My stomach was paining cats and dogs today and it was a long, continuous bout of pain that lasted a couple of hours that would stop only for a few seconds, if ever. And this one time, I just stopped and focused on the just the pain. Like I tried to understand what was actually happening to me that was making me moan my heart out. When we feel pain we obviously react to it by crying or yelling or fainting, or whatever. And we tried to forget it or push the pain at the back of our head. But this is one of the few times I've focused on it and asked myself and tried to sort of 'make' my body tell me what's changing in me to make me feel this. And all I came up was this weird vision of my cells getting all puffy and moving extra fast. Yes, weird. And yes, I dropped Biology in 10th grade.
Anyways, my question exactly is this: When we feel pain, what exactly is happening, at the cellular level? And why do we feel it?
BQ: Is there a way to measure the intensity of pain? And is all pain truly 'mental'?
There are actually different types of pain, including nocieptive pain, neuropathic pain, and somatoform pain.
The type of pain you experienced was almost certainly nocieptive pain. This type of pain occurs when nociceptors (a type of sensory neuron--actually, there are different types of nociceptors as well...) are properly stimulated (like say, getting a paper cut) which results in a nerve impulse that's transmitted through the nervous system to the brain. The brain does some prepossessing of the signal that it gets (in some parts of the brain), which eventually results in a conscious perception of pain elsewhere in the brain.
To give you an idea of what stimulates pain receptors, some are stimulated by pressure / mechanical deformation.
Or at least, that's a very basic and mostly correct explanation that leaves out a *lot* of detail.
There are ways to measure the intensity of pain, but an objective tool for doing so isn't, AFAIK, in current practice; that annoying 1 to 10 pain scale range with smiley faces and maybe a description of another type of pain that's about at each number is like is about as good as it gets clinically speaking (other than observed behavior, etc...). An objective tool would be using an fMRI (basically, a brain scan) and then doing some complicated analysis on the resulting fMRI data, but such a method isn't all that effective due to various limitations.
You could of course say that pain is purely mental, but obviously it's a mental phenomenon brought out by physical stimulus. (And even in the cases that where there's no actual physical stimulus and it's purely somataform pain, it's still brought on as an emergent property of a physical brain).
I googled biology of pain for you, and the only thing I found that wasn't super technical was this (a more informative read than my answer, it seems): http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/pain.htm
RE: At the most basic level, what exactly is pain and why do we feel it? This is today's random question.
My stomach was paining cats and dogs today and it was a long, continuous bout of pain that lasted a couple of hours that would stop only for a few seconds, if ever. And this one time, I just stopped and focused on the just the pain. Like I tried to understand...
Carrying on from where Matt left off, And as I understood your question, I think one needs to look up the biochemistry of pain - what exactly goes on within the cell(s) of the "in pain" organ/body part. While the transmission & physiology of pain is fairly well mapped out, what exactly happens within each cell is still being researched. Pain is necessary as it is a signal of damage & a "command or plea" to take immediate corrective steps to reduce or avoid or remedy that damage. Inflammation, whatever the cause, also produces localized pain as a signal of damage that needs to be attended to. Pain probably evolved as a survival mechanism... As in most things related to the cell, there are proteins, chemicals/molecules, & receptors that, in various combinations / sequences, carry out desired functions or tasks. In fact, opiates (besides the natural ones secreted by our body in response) bind to the same receptors to stop the sensation of pain & give relief. There is also a possibility that the cell membrane undergoes some changes or at least alter the state of equilibrium. This is what may have caused your sensation of 'puffiness' (salt imbalance as a response) & 'moving extra fast' (the electric impulses, the heightened sensitivity, may be even some increase in temperature & metabolism???) This is all I can venture about pain at the cellular level without going into too much technical info :-/
Some interesting sites I found while searching for deeper answers : http://biochemistryofpain.blogspot.in/ -- this has very interesting visual & videos as well. As an aside I also Googled "physiology of pain" & this is a nice, concise overview : http://www.health24.com/Medical/Pain/About-pain/Physiology-of-pain-20120721 In addition, I consulted a fairly basic book we bought a while back : "How We Live & Why We Die - The Secret Lives of Cells" by Lewis Wolpert (2009) In case you are at all interested, here's a book I recommend : "Sex & the Origins of Death" by William R. Clark (1996). Very interesting & informative ; also about apoptosis or 'cell suicide' !!
This is how the Human Body get messages of pain & how it works Imagine you hit your finger with an hammer whilst hitting a nail into wood, this send a message straight up & through your main 2- Nerve systems in your spine they travel up to your brain & the brain send a message out for you to act & tells you where the pain is then this send out if it's a cut for instance it will send special type of blood cells to block the bleeding the whole of your body is covered with smaller nerve calls all linked through your main nerv system & this tells your brain to act upon that message. This is why it helps some times when your hear people say Mind over matter the matter is your Body & your mind is the brain, This is how everyones body works in as simple way as can be explained & hope it helps you. Best Wishes.
Maybe you should take a psychology course when you go to college. From my conditioning class for psych, there an experiment with two groups of rats. Group A received saccharine sweetener and were punished if they tried to perform a certain action, in this case pushing a lever. Group B was given cocaine and was punished the same way. After being punished, no rats for Group A repeated that action again. Some rats from Group B, however, continued to push the lever despite punishment.
I heard somewhere that it hurts more when someone punches you on purpose than by accident. I believe that someone who intends to hurt someone or something else will try harder to cause I do think there is a mental aspect to pain. Matt seems to have a pretty good explanation.