Dolor

[Diane]

Here is a lovely long and rambling blog by a philosophy phd candidate on pain; simply fabulous.
http://dolor.blogspot.com/
He is pulling together resources from all over. I don't mind at all traveling in his tailwind for awhile. :thumbs_up

[nari]

I liked a lot of the things this chap is saying; not least the statement that we should not be fussing about with measuring pain - which is one of my strongest opinions on the silly VAS - but looking at disability/pain relation and beliefs about pain.

Nari

[bernard]

Diane,

It's another fine site. :thumbs_up But when did you get the time to find such pearls and... sleep. :angel:

You give soooooooooooooooooooo much to read to my French mind. :thumbs_up

[Diane]

Here is Adam's entry from Dec 8th:
Pain hurts less when it is inflicted by a woman, researchers have found.
Students were asked to put their fingers in a clamp which was tightened until the pain was unbearable. Researchers from the University of Westminster found that people allowed women to turn the clamp much further than men.

Dr David Williams, who led the research said the study suggested people do not expect women to inflict as much pain. He said: "This effect is likely to be a result of what participants subconsciously expect, based on socially acquired gender stereotypes - people feel that they are less likely to experience intense pain from a stimulus given by a woman rather than a man.

"This effect is less likely to be down to males trying to appear macho in front of a female - a conscious and deliberate act - as the result applied to both genders." He said the fact there were no differences in how men and women responded to the test suggested women do not actually handle pain better.

Dr Williams said people's sensitivity to pain was also shown to depend on their surroundings. In the study, people appeared to suffer more if there was a poster on the wall which might trigger negative feelings, such as a chart of wounds or a poster calling for blood donors.

Dr Williams, who carried out the research for his PhD, said: "People subconsciously evaluate their environment. "This evaluation can result in identical stimuli being perceived as more or less painful for the same participant or, in some cases, an innocuous stimulus being perceived as painful or a relatively intense stimulus perceived as innocuous."

He said the finding could have implications for how patients are given potentially painful treatments. "Individuals can be 'primed' for pain by qualities of their environment and, as a result, may suffer unnecessarily during acutely painful clinical procedures. "Awareness of these principles may be useful in developing methods of reducing suffering in those situations.
Be exquisitely careful guys...;) :cool: :rolleyes:
(Bernard, I get to roam around more because I don't a board to maintain.:) Nice job by the way.. I like the latest threads up at the top.)