Day 08 - Pain free

Lately I've been watching a lot of House MD - which by the way is an amazing series. Since I have a never ending fascination for the human body I decided to write about a very interesting condition called Congenital Pain Insensitivity. It usually runs in families, but being a very rare disease that has its cause in the genes, it’s seen more in groups who marry amongst themselves (if someone carries a defective gene for a disease and has children with another carrier, the combination will give a new person with the defective genes from both parents). As its name says (and how you might have already guessed) those affected by it can't feel physical pain (and never had). 

This is how we feel pain

We have receptors (nerves) all over the body. They can sense the temperature, where our body is in space and pain - among others. When in pain, those receptors will send a message to our brain so that it 'knows' we are in pain, in order to stop the action and try to avoid it in the future. For reasons unknown, in this condition, the connection between the nerves that sense pain and the brain’s recognition of pain is missing. Unfortunately, it is incurable, the emphasis in treatment being on the prevention of injuries.


Not feeling physical pain might sound pretty great, but it's not. Those who suffer from it can break their bones without even noticing; infections go unnoticed for far too long or they suffer burns from hot foods, water - you get the idea. If you found this interesting and want to know more about it, you should watch episode 14 (Insensitivity) from season three of House MD.


I don't think I'll be doing the photo challenge anymore, so I should change the name of the blog and the url soon. And I am also kind of running out of ideas of what to write about (yes, already). If you have any suggestions, let me know.