Pain and acupuncture

Abstract

The word pain derives its origin from the Indo-European root meaning aleg suffer. The word pain is later and is derived from the Latin word «poena» means punishment. Since ancient times there was disagreement about the perception of pain and its assessment. Unlike vision, hearing and smell, pain does not seem to be a primary sense, but rather an emotional experience. Most researchers pain, felt the pain as a complex concept, which is induced by noxious stimuli. Although the pain is the most common symptom in medical and despite huge advances that have occurred in the field of analgesia and anesthesia, the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in the genesis and maintenance of not fully understood. The definition of pain given in 1979 by the Classification Committee of the International Study of Pain (IASP) «as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.” In other words, although the Physiology and Anatomy define a precise point of reference for the detection and transmission of messages interpreted as painful, what differentiates the experience of pain, it is the fact that there is always an emotional rating of pain experience.