That nagging pain ...

For a few weeks (gasp!) I have been dealing with discomfort, which has compelled me to learn a tad about human anatomy.  Anytime I engage in such learning about the human body, I am reminded of my daughter, who, after her first exposure to learning about anatomy in medical school, remarked that it is a surprise that we don't drop dead like crazy. 

Our complicated anatomy itself is evidence that no intelligent god designed us--anybody with half my intelligence could have put together a better Lego model!  Then there is the remarkably complex biochemistry.  And then the mind, which is beyond our analytical understanding.  Seriously, how do people sincerely believe that a god designed and created all these?

Such a highly complicated system means problems of various kinds.  One of those is chronic pain.  All I have is discomfort.  Not even pain.  And then there is chronic pain, which is "estimated to affect a fifth of the global population, or 1.5bn people."

Even reading that sentence is enough for me to consider myself lucky.  A while ago, I stopped asking my mother about her pain because there is no point.  "It is always there," she said a couple of years ago.  More recently when my father asked my mother about her pain, my sister cut him off with "stop asking her everyday."  I did joke with my mother that if she lived in Oregon she will be able to use marijuana.

I suppose as long as we humans have been around, we have also been bothered by pain.  And we have searched for remedies.

Our instinct when in any kind of pain, acute or chronic, is to make it stop. We reach for drugs, typically one of two groups: anti-inflammatories such as aspirin and ibuprofen, or opioids. Both types of drug are blunt, ancient instruments that have been around in various forms for thousands of years, a fact that would be quaint if the pills weren’t also potentially lethal. Aspirin derives from willow bark, whose first-recorded use as a painkiller was in Egypt in 1500BC. The opium poppy is known to have been cultivated in Mesopotamia in 3400BC (the Sumerians apparently called it the “joy plant”) and opium was recommended before surgery from at least as early as the second century AD, when the Greek philosopher Celsus recorded its use as an anaesthetic.

The prolonged use of drugs is, obviously, one hell of a problem.

Developing the miracle painkiller drug is not easy:

Pain medication faces distinctive problems that don’t apply to other drugs. Unlike cancer, for example, pain doesn’t have clear biomarkers: you can’t measure the effect of a drug that treats it by counting white blood cells. Instead, researchers rely on patients giving their pain a score on numbered scales, from one to ten, say, or on a visual scale, where the individual marks the level of their pain at a point on a line between two extremes. But pain is infuriatingly subjective. The placebo effect is significant: give someone a sugar pill and they’ll report an improvement in their pain just because it has been noticed and apparently treated. There is no way of knowing if one person’s report of their pain means the same as another’s. “Your nine is different to my nine,” said L’Huillier, who looked somewhat despairing at the thought of such a crude measure being used to determine the efficacy of a drug in which his company had just invested hundreds of millions of dollars. “I have no idea what your nine is versus my nine. And that’s what we’re using in trials.”

Which is what my daughter told me after he early years in medical school--there is no way to compare pain.  Your pain is your pain.

May you have a pain-free life!

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

After more than two decades, all of us--except my brother--went to the town where we had spent a good chunk of our lives.  A town that makes us recall nothing but good times, even though the ending was not what we would have scripted.

Of course, we went to the old home.  One of the many things that struck me was how green the entire compound was.  Immensely more than when we were there.  It was almost a private enchanted forest.

In the forests and the Savannah where we humans spent most of our lives before we invented agriculture and quickly became urban (and urbane too?!)  At a gut-level, it has always appealed to me that we should maintain those links to the old home--the wilderness.  But, the wuss that I am, I don't wish to be far away from the material comforts of our modern existence.  The nice bed. Indoor toilet. Shower. Hot food.  But, it is good to get away on a regular basis.

That I have been doing regularly. And now I have more reasons to keep up the practice:

Several theories have been proposed as to why spending time in forests might provide health benefits. Some have suggested that chemicals emitted from trees, so-called phytoncides, have a physiological effect on our stress levels. Others suggest that forest sounds — birds chirping, rustling leaves — have a physiologically calming effect. Yet evidence to support these theories is limited.

The "limited" does not discourage me because that is how science operates.  It takes a number of studies and under highly controlled conditions before researchers can confidently make their claims.  But, seriously, who among us thinks that “forest bathing” will not do us good?

“I usually encourage participants to sit or lie down on the forest ground and listen to the sounds,” [Dr. Hiroko Ochiai, a surgeon based at Tokyo Medical Center] says. “The hypersonic natural world can be soothing, and things are always moving even while we are still. It can be very calming.” 

Therein lies an important aspect of this nature treatment: It is about the mindfulness.  

I have encountered mountain bikers, for instance, along the nature trails.  They aren't listening to the "hypersonic natural world" because they are too focused on their movement.  Be still they cannot.  When we walk, however, we stop whenever we want. We look at the moss. The strange knots on trees. We feel the ground under the shoes. We hear the whistling sounds of the gentle breeze. The woodpecker. And, yes, the mosquitoes too.  

Unfortunately, in our modern existence, a significant number of humans have virtually no access to forests and lakes and rivers and oceans.  Most of us are trapped in concrete jungles with asphalt trails, and we wonder why we are stressed and unhappy, even as we spend all our times looking at tiny blue screens!

So, back to the scientific evidence:

The science is still lacking to prove it. But there is some evidence — as well as good old common sense — to suggest that spending time in nature is good for both the mind and body, whether done as a group or alone. It may be something we all need more of. 

Indeed!