The gene mutation that proves the pain isn’t ‘all in your head’

If you live with a chronic pain condition like fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis or TMJ, you know first-hand how difficult it can be to get relief. Worse, even, is getting your doctor to listen to you without feeling like he believes the pain is all in your head. In fact, many people who live with these types of chronic pain are simply prescribed drugs for anxiety and depression and then shuffled off to continue suffering. It’s a sad fact that if a doctor can’t see the cause behind a pain issue, it isn’t considered to be real. Now though, thanks to a new study by researchers at McGill University, a cause has been found that explains this kind of pain. That means relief may be just around the corner… The princess and the pea Did you ever read that children’s book called “The Princess and the Pea?” If not, here are the basics… It’s about a fairy tale princess whose fingertips are so incredibly sensitive that she can feel a tiny pea even through a pile of 20 mattresses. What does that have to do with pain, you wonder? Well, it all comes down to something known as heightened somatic awareness — a condition where you experience physical discomfort for which there’s no physiological explanation (exactly what we were just talking about in the case of fibromyalgia, rheumatoid and TMJ). Patients with heightened somatic awareness often experience unexplained symptoms — headaches, sore joints, nausea, constipation or itchy skin — that cause emotional distress, and are twice as likely to develop chronic pain. The thing is, just like I mentioned, doctors ignore all of these issues because somatic awareness is thought to be caused by psychological issues. Samar Khoury, a postdoctoral fellow at McGill’s Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain […]

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