Identifying Pain
Often when we are afflicted with pain, it is a symptom of something that is wrong with your body. Excluding the pain you feel when you bump into something or suffer some sort of trauma, pain may be a way for your body to let you know that something internally is not going the way it should.
There are, however, some conditions that, however serious they may sound, don’t cause any pain or even discomfort. Let’s take the case of a hiatal hernia symptoms for example. When a portion of your upper stomach passes through the esophageal hiatus and gets stuck above or near the diaphragm, the resulting condition is a hiatal hernia. This can have a few symptoms, such as acid reflux, heartburn or even slight pain in your chest cavity, but quite often people who suffer from this condition don’t feel any symptoms. This is a clear cut case where the body doesn’t really have the mechanisms to make you feel pain in order to let you know that there’s something wrong with that area.
But let’s return to pain that you can actcually feel. The reason why it’s so important to know your pains is so that you can accurately portray what you’re feeling to your physician. Managing to describe the place and the intensity of the pain you’re experiencing will go a long way when diagnosing whatever disease you suffer from. It may not be enough to let the doctor know what or why it is you’re hurting, but it will certainly give you an idea of what you’re not experiencing. For example, we all know chest pain is often associated with heart conditions. But it can also be associated with a lot of other different diseases. Describing your pain with a decent degree of accuracy will have your doctor know if it is indeed a heart disease that’s causing the pain or if it is, for example, heartburn or a respiratory disease.
The exact position of the pain sensation is also important. A sharp pain in right chest area will be the indicator of something different than, for example, a congested heart artery. It can be, for example, a symptom of something as simple as a gall bladder condition. Of course, it can also mean something worse, like cancer or tuberculosis. But, like we said before, knowing your pain is a step towards the best possible diagnostic.
