What is ‘Referred Pain’ trying to tell us ?

Again, I’ll reiterate that I’m exploring these issues purely on an intuitive basis. Sometimes, too much knowledge is an obstruction. Just trying to focus rationally on why ‘referred pain’ exists at all, I believe, can reveal certain secrets about how the nervous system chooses to operate as it does.

I’m going to assume here that all referred pain originates with some actual threat to the nerve system itself. I don’t know if this is strictly true, but in my experience, it is. Its probably reasonable for anyone to assume that, where a nerve is compressed, it might cause pain further along its extremity, and only in that part of the body to which that nerve is dedicated. However, as I see it, it should cause numbness, not pain. Pain would only be relevant if there was an injury at that extremity. Where there is an occurrence of pain (referred pain) at an extremity, and there is no obvious injury there, then we must reverse our thinking on normal nerve system signalling processes so we can locate the actual problem.

To me, this is a clever tactic which the nerve system employs to slow down our responses, because it doesn’t trust how we might consciously react if it simply signalled pain at the actual source…i.e. a threat to itself. I know that sounds like I’m giving the nervous system a separate identity of its own, capable of making decisions and enacting processes, and capable of outwitting our conscious reactions. And I am, but only in the same way that we understand our conscious and subconscious beings tend to interact. One or the other must dominate according to the circumstances. But, with the nervous system, it must always dominate by default, otherwise its protective systems become vulnerable to corruption, and that just wouldn’t make sense. ‘Referred Pain’, in itself, causes this puzzle, and we must re-learn the process backwards to find the logic in it.

Where the neck is concerned, I can easily see why the nervous system resorts to such ‘referred pain’ to achieve its protective aims. The neck must carry on functioning regardless of its own distress, and any actual neck pain is reserved by the nervous system as a last resort. Considering the human race has gone through many thousands of years unaware that referred pain in the hand might signify a threat to a nerve in the neck, I think that the nervous system has been very patient, waiting for us to gain the knowledge to interpret its signals correctly. And now that we know, what do we do ? It seems that we resort to interfering aggressively with external manipulations, which seem to me to go against the very reason why the nervous system adopted ‘referred pain’ signalling processes in the first place. Maybe the whole ‘referred pain’ system worked better when we knew less !

And, the nervous system hasn’t yet adjusted itself to our new methods. If its original intention was to somehow distract us from the source of the problem, what must it do now that we are no longer distracted ? Should it evolve an electric shock for anyone who dares to touch the damaged area ? Of one thing we can be sure. Now that the secrets of referred pain are being unravelled, we must assume that the nervous system is likely to resort to other, as yet unknown, methods, to maintain its position in the hierarchy of control over threats to itself.


Gerry