Dr Joanne Douglas.

Dr Joanne is a Professor at UBC in Anesthesiology.  She said it’s a good job we forget pain or there never would be any brothers or sisters!  The pain of delivery is rated up there as one of the greatest pains in life.

How do we measure pain?  How does it modulate?  Pain teaches us.  We learn from pain.  We learn to get away from it.

You can learn to modulate your own pain.  You can stimulate neurons to attack the pain centre, such as when you bang your finger then dance around in pain.  You are stimulating your neurons.

Chronic pain is big business today.

Some are charlatans.

Acute pain can be measured in many ways.  We didn’t treat pain in the past till it was diagnosed.

Morphine or Demurral will treat pain but we need to know what is causing it first.

Today we listen to patients more and let them treat their own pain.  We give them control of the pain relief.

In some cases we even try to block the pain before it happens.

We want the patient to relax before surgery.

There are multiple pain relief methods.  We can forget pain.

17% of people in Canada live with chronic pain and over a third of people over 65.

Chronic pain is a pain of over three months.

We are more active and heavier than in previous generations.

Hypnosis and meditation can modify your perception of pain.

The speaker was thanked by Lexie.