BondageSlaveMN
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Joined: 12/11/2007
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There are two camps reagarding this line of thought. There are those that believe the mind can be trained to tolerate and negate pain. Take, for example, monks who set fire to themselves in demonstration. Many folks believe the "screaming" sound they are hearing is the monk screaming when in fact it is water and other liquids rapidly escaping the body much like the screaming a lobster makes when cooked. Also consider the fire walkers of India. They burn mounds of wood and bushes for days prior and then the participants walk an eighth of a mile on the hot coals without so much as a grimace.
In each of these cases, one might argue that the willing participants are feeling pain but simple are able to tolerate it without any outwardly demonstration. One might argue, as in the case of the fire walker, that the feet have been so thoroughly calloused that no pain is felt at all. And lastly, one might argue that the mind itself has been trained to not feel pain at all.
Then there is the camp that believes no such mental training to be possible. Science will show that pain receptors still send impulses to the brain and that they are likely still processed in these cases of severe pain.
Having studied quite a bit of neuroscience myself, I will give the following assessment. The brain is capable of "filtering" out stimuli. Take, for instance, your clothes. Once you have donned them, do you even notice that you are wearing them unless you consciously think about it? No, you do not (unless you have some variety of neuropathy). This is because the brain is "used" to these stimuli and "filter" them out as they are of no concern to the organism. Additionally, receptors have a point of threshold. This is the point at which a stimulus becomes powerful enough to trigger an action potential (in other words send information to the brain). Some receptors are capable of adaption. In other words, if these receptors are stimulated intensely enough for a long enough period of time, they adapt to the new condition and stop responding as intensely.
As far as pain is concerned, it is, obviously, possible to build a tolerance to it. This points to the idea that the brain and nervous system as a whole are capable of adapting to pain and probably to intense and extreme pain.
Now, as far as medical procedures are concerned, no respectable doctor will perform a procedure on a patient who is not receiving some sort of anesthesia. This may be general anesthesia (putting you out cold), sedation (you may or may not lose consciousness, but you don't require intubation) or local anesthesia (as in the case of most brain surgeries, birthes, etc.). The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, it would be severely traumatizing to the average patient to experience such pain without anesthesia. Secondly, imagine a knee replacement. Imagine the doctor making an incision on an unanethsatised patient and the patient jerking relexively. "Well, sorry but I just cut all the ligaments and tendons in your knee, you'll never walk on that leg again." A doctor offering such a procedure without anesthesia is a quack and/or does not actually have a license to practice medicine.
As for the comment likening doctors to drug pushers, this is an utterly ridiculous comment. Are you also of the opinion that vaccines and antibiotics shouldn't be administered? Of course there is a risk associated with anesthesia and medicines of all sorts. Any injection made to the body has a chance of becoming infected (although this chance is very minimal when correct sterile procedure is employed). Even conscious sedation (meds like propathol, midazolam and fentanyl) has the associated risk of causing respiratory distress, but this doesn't mean it's safer or better not to use them. And sure, people have died from vaccines and antibiotics, but statistically speaking, these medications saved many times over more lives than they have taken.
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