Pain is part of being human, and by trying to understand it we can reduce and manage it, says Monty Lyman in this accessible and well-written book
The Painful Truth: The New Science Of Why We Hurt And How We Can Heal
Monty Lyman Bantam Press £20
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If one in five people worldwide were suffering from a long-term, debilitating medical condition that wrecks lives and costs economies billions in healthcare and sickness absences, we’d take it seriously, wouldn’t we?
In fact, the condition with this widespread toll was recognised as a disease only in 2019: it’s persistent or chronic pain.
But pain is part of being human, and by trying to understand it we can reduce and manage it, says Monty Lyman in this accessible and well-written book. He takes us into the world of pain: its weirdness, its growing pervasiveness and how it’s been misunderstood for centuries.
Pain is part of being human, and by trying to understand it we can reduce and manage it, says Monty Lyman in this accessible and well-written book
One of the book’s central ideas is that pain is ‘our protector’. For example, if you pull a back muscle, your nervous system tells your brain you’re hurt. The brain produces the feeling of pain, which leads you to protect your back.
This is the way pain’s role has historically been understood. The problem is that this protective response can become over-zealous, telling you you’re in pain when the physical source of that pain – the injury – is long gone.
‘No brain, no pain,’ as Lyman puts it.
Lyman, a doctor himself (though not a pain specialist), presents interesting science and case studies to explore pain. For example, we meet the delightful Jo – a permanently high, Scottish septuagenarian.
She has a rare genetic disease: not only does she not feel pain, neither does she experience fear or anxiety.
Genetics can affect pain, but so can emotion, past trauma and social factors. Loneliness can affect people’s sensitivity to pain, as can the marginalisation of people in minority groups.
A holistic approach is needed to understand and treat pain, argues Lyman. Making people feel safe is important. An example, which may seem trivial on an individual level, takes on a huge importance at a population level: that of needle fear and pain.
If vaccination drives, such as the current Covid one, are to work, it’s important for healthcare staff to create positive, comforting environments.
Lyman is at pains to stress it is not a self-help book. He does provide some interesting approaches to dealing with pain (including knitting) in the last chapter. But after having convinced the reader that pain is a huge problem, he could have devoted more space to potential solutions.
The idea that we could train the ‘overprotective brain to be less protective’, and so tackle an enormous public health issue, is an enticing one.
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