Months ago, I developed discomfort on my right-hand elbow, which aggravated to severe pain. Even at the beginning stage, I knew the reason was my badminton sessions. But I chose to ignore it, not wanting to forgo the joy. Eventually, no longer able to play, I visited my physician. “You should thank your body for signalling pain,” he said. After a pause, he declared, “Pain is good.”
With my curiosity awakened, I did some studies on pain and came across a discovery in 1946, by a surgeon named Dr. Paul Brand, who was working in the Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore, Tamil Nadu. While treating leprosy patients, he noticed that they were gradually losing toes and fingers. On investigation, he found out that rats were chewing off these body parts of the patients while they were sleeping, but no one woke up as they did not sense any pain. Dr. Brand found the root cause: leprosy damaged the nervous system, and that resulted in loss of sensation of pain.
After coming to know this, I realised the meaning of what my physician said, “Pain is good.”
