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Thirsty People Feel More Pain
Bifurcati writes "Being thirsty makes you more sensitive to pain, according to a recent study. By simultaneously doing brain scans, new areas of the brain were activated when both pain and thirst were present, apparently making the pain more "painful" - perhaps a survival method so that pain is prioritized over thirst. They'd like to do more research, but ethical issues make it tough - even these subjects had to spend three hours being poked and prodded!"
If not drinking water amplifies pain, wouldn't the same be true from a not-so-distant-cousin, pleasure?
I used to work with a fellow named Mike. He suffered from severe carpal tunnel syndrome, perhaps caused by the decades of typing he had done while programming. He would always drink massive amounts of water and juice while working, saying that it helped his wrists. We'd make fun of him because he had to piss every half hour, but perhaps he was on to something.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Why would it be unethical if the test subjects were made fully aware of what was to be done to them, and were willing to undergo the experiment? Unless somebody was deceived or coerced I don't see how ethics would even come into it.
Their conclusion: Be hydrated.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I am one of the least sensitive-to-pain people you'll ever meet. I used to always feel pain, because I was afraid of feeling pain. But I learned years ago how to ignore that fear -- avoid fearing entirely. Since then, my tolerance for pain is huge. I've broken bones, lost teeth (punch to the face in a bar) and had my share of other situations (cat bites, skateboard accidents, car accident, etc) and my tolerance to pain is impressive. I've even done major dental work without pain killers and passed kidney stones the same way.
I don't drink a lot of fluids. I should (considering the kidney stones), but I don't. I love water, just don't drink a lot of it. I love tea, too, but forget to drink it.
I think feeling pain is often a mind over matter kind of thing. I had a carpenter friend who cut two of his fingers off and didn't feel pain until he noticed it. I had a friend who broke a foot snowboarding and didn't feel pain until he looked at it.
Have there been studies on pain and mind-over-matter situations?
Fromt the article:
Survival instinct
He says pain is accentuated because it is more important to survival than mild thirst.
"The sensation with the most immediate implications for survival is pushed to the forefront of attention," he said.
Dr Farrell says the findings suggest it could be wise for people who are about to go through a painful experience should drink more water beforehand.
He says evidence from different types of studies also support this relationship between drinking water and pain.
But could people deliberately use dehydration to maximise pain, say via torture?
"We suspect if they got dehydrated enough that the overwhelming sense of thirst would probably make pain less rather than more," he said.
Previous studies in rats have shown that mild thirst makes the animals feel more pain but severe dehydration actually dulls pain, he says.
He says this too makes sense from the point of view of survival.
"If you were very dehydrated it would pay to suppress pain because it might get in the way of your search for water," he said.
Wouldn't that imply that the more hydrated you are, the more salient the pain should be, because then thirst is particularly irrelevant to your current needs? They say that "mild thirst" is not as pressing a survival need as experienced pain--well then, wouldn't NO thirst be even less pressing than the pain? I don't get it. They predict the situation switches for severe dehydration which makes sense (the thirst is more salient than the pain) but they don't explain why the pain should be more salient for mild thirst as compared to slaked thirst.
I would guess the logic in the actual PNAS paper is better. Perhaps it's the reporting here that's got something screwy.
we just learned this today in anatomy and physiology. It didn't seem like ground-breaking science, just common sense. If you're thirsty, neurons in the pre-optic nucleus are shrinking (crenating) because your plasma fluid compartment is drying up. This creates a hypertonic (or hyperosmotic) environment that literally sucks the water out of your cells. Since your plasma is more concentrated (or has a higher osmolarity), the resting membrane potential goes up because the crenation of your nervous cells causes chemically-operated protein channels to open when they otherwise wouldn't be. This happens all over your body, not just in the pre-optic nucleus (also called the supra-optic nucleus). The crenation at that location (right near where the optic nerves cross eachother) causes those particular cells to pump more Anti-Diuretic Hormone through the pituitary gland, causing your urine volume to decrease (by causing the nephron tubules in your kidneys to reabsorb more water instead of making urine with it), but the same thing happens to cells all over your body when your plasma becomes too concentrated (too dry). In lab today, I had to drink 80ml of water with 7g of NaCl in it, and my feet would fall asleep whenever I stood on them for more than a few minutes. Oh, and I was thirsty and sensitive to pain. Hooray for science!
I think this is an interesting study. When I nurse, I work hospice. When people are close to death they often tell us to allow them to become dehydrated because it decreases pain sensations. I am curious how this information fits into that.
Of course, we get orders to pump enough morphine into them that the whole thing might be considered mute.
Nothing hides evidence like a stew. -Gus Pratt
The basis of medical ethics is to be able to demonstrate the absence of coercion, and not having to rely on the benefit of the doubt. CYA on a grand scale.
It's a reaction to history. A great deal of what we've learned about the human body came from abuse of slaves, the poor, prisoners, conscripts, the mentally ill, etc. Have a new brain surgery technique? Try it out first on a worthless peon. The real watershed was the world's reaction to experiments done by a certain Dr. Mengele in Germany, and gruesome shit done in the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Nowadays you can't do medical research without lots of funding and cooperation from institutions -- institutions that would rather not be associated with, say, testing risky AIDS medication on orphans living in state care.
Does that retard progress? Absolutely. But the alternative is depravity.
I have also been trained as a Wilderness First Responder and can tell you that at least "extremely thirsty" people have such an incredibly deranged world view that definitions of "pain" get thrown right out the window.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp
Drinking more water, "cures many diseases like arthritis, angina, migraines, hypertension and asthma." Sure thing, Doc. Speaking of water, have I got a bridge to sell you...
English is easier said than done.
Sociopath?
Disassociation of pain signals with the feeling of being "hurt" is a response to intense pain, and apparently it can also be learned through training. It is not the same as people who literally feel no pain.
Back 10-15 years ago I had cluster headaches that came about every 3 months. Cluster headaches have been described as "probably the worst pain that humans experience". The only way I could cope was to mentally disassociate the pain with the feeling of hurt. Basically I would mentally take myself to another place and watch myself feel pain as an outside observer, but not actually experience it in the first person.
The thought process was probably something like:
"Oh look, my body is telling me that I am in intense pain. How interesting."
I'm not as good at it anymore since I haven't gotten headaches in over a decade, but my threshold for pain is still much higher than average. I'd like to think that doesn't make me a sociopath.
As I said, it's great when somebody brings in a refreshing point of view. At the same time, when your points of view are always "refreshing" it might mean that you're just stirring up trouble to sell books (or you're simply a kook). The probability of being right given that you're unable to convince the astounding majority of experts of your case is generally not high. It happens, but I'm afraid that Dr. Batmanghelidj is not in good company on the average. Yes, he's not alone in questioning the HIV => AIDS orthodoxy, he is damn near alone, and while serious research in antiretroviral drugs has made a dent in the appearance of AIDS in HIV infected people, I'm not sure what the people who deny the link have managed to do to treat the disease.
No, certainly not. At least, not by itself. However, if you combine it with the fact that only a small portion of his work is actually published and the larger volume of it is self published, that's a little more suspect. Add to that the fact that his really controversial stuff and the work that's really central to what makes him stand out as a "scientist" is also the stuff that has never made it through peer review, and it starts smelling a little less authoritative. This is the same set of arguments creationists and other groups selling pseudoscientific nonsense tend to use. Sometimes we need to remember some of the lessons Carl Sagan taught us: But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Knocking the peer review process generally earns you some kook points as well. What percentage of peer reviewed articles do you suppose are fraudulent? What percentage of ground breaking work (which his AIDS work certainly would be) that makes it through peer review do you think is wrong? Now compare that number with the percentage of "ground breaking" work posted by random folks on the web. There's a reason good college professors try to teach their students that "got it from the web" is second only to "heard it in a bar" as a serious academic reference.
And then the appeal to the widespread conspiracy. Adding up the points...
Certainly, our society does tend to over medicate. Medication is a profitable industry, too. But don't you think you'd be seeing more whistle blowers if it were all some conspiracy to keep us taking AIDS drugs? Something doesn't smell right with that assumption. Sometimes when nobody agrees with you, you're just wrong. It doesn't always mean you're a misunderstood genius or you're tearing down The Man.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Well, first, by definition "controversial stuff" is less likely to survive review. That's how Schon got his stuff through: it looked very, very plausible; it was just not reproducible in any way (heck, it was fake). I have no doubt Dr Batmanghelidj believed his results reproducible - and from what I've read, his assertions are not only based on his own trials, but are easily tested.
Secondly, it is odd that you would use the construction "what makes him stand out as a scientist". Is that your own phrase? It seems an odd one to use, when you are saying that he does not pass conventional criteria for accepted "standing": being published widely but not too widely - and don't, whatever you do, put any non-reviewed papers on your site or they will conclude you're a kook!
Knocking the peer review process generally earns you some kook points as well.
Judging by the trajectory of my post's moderation this evening, I am going to earn more kook points than karma points by citing the late Dr F.B. I'm okay with that.
don't you think you'd be seeing more whistle blowers
Don't you think there are very powerful mechanisms to suppress them? I read an aphorism recently along the lines, "Control a man's support and you control the man." We know that the first effective restraint on people is financial, for instance. One does not have to get fully melodramatic and invoke Lynchian Cowboy chats or late night telephone calls here.
Sometimes when nobody agrees with you, you're just wrong.
I'd be thrilled if somebody would investigate the possibility that he might be right about something. You don't seem at all inclined to do that. Your energy is devoted to sitting on the fence, discounting iconoclasts as kooks without a trial (on circumstance alone); and awarding "kook points" to their defenders. A harmless hobby but not very helpful.
little more than anecdotal evidence
I believe Dr Batmanghelidj tested his theories clinically throughout his career. However my understanding is purely based on his book; I have not read the papers.
legions of experts are convinced that he does not
I have not seen a single opinion that contradicts Dr Batmanghelidj on the issue of dehydration. When I said "medical answers", I meant those that concern the human body's need for water, and dehydration as an unacknowledged cause of mistreated symptoms.
If you are referring to AIDS: What do you do when you have experts on both sides of the question? Easy! Discredit the ones whose views you don't like. Can you be certain this has not occurred on this issue? Can you be certain that you are not yourself constructing a subjective system of innuendo around this man? If you can, please explain the source of this certitude.
As for the non-experts: You can stop one thousand people on the street and 997 of them will happily lynch you for telling them you hold an opinion about AIDS that differs from what they heard on TV. It's that kind of hot-button issue.
I would assert to you that they are not. They have a hard time making it past rigiorous peer review because they tend to be wrong.
I disagree.
I put people like Batmanghelidj, Dembski, Behe, and anybody else who shuns peer review
I have not seen any evidence that Dr Batmanghelidj "shuns peer review"! You're trying to construct your own caricature of the man that can hardly be based on the facts you've gained from his web site - as far as I know, you haven't read his books.
They claim to be a persecuted minority when, in reality, they have more press and more clout than much of the scientific establishment.
In the same vein: That is absurd. What clout does Dr B have? You hadn't heard of him until this post. What effect has he had on m
you had me at #!
Let people assess it for themselves, try his therapies, and perhaps add to the rather impressive roster of testimonials he offers in his book!
Bullshit. Repeat after me: the plural of anecdote is not evidence. Only controlled experimental studies can show us if any of these BS "therapies" work.
I used to work at the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National Lab (IPNS) for a couple of years. While I was there ('96-98) one of the studies a post-doc did on the QENS instrument (iirc) was to study how anesthetics work. As it turns out, anesthetics enter between the walls of cells such that they recede so far from each other that the nerve senders/receptors can't make contact thus, the pain signals aren't transmitted to the brain.
Here's a little mind experiment: imagine having 2 balloons, one inside the other. Now, blow air into the outer balloon, leaving the inner balloon the same size. The air you push into the volume between the 2 balloons is the anesthetic. The more anesthetic, the farther apart the balloon walls get from each other and the nerves lose contact with each other.
So, it would follow that if you were to generally increase the amount of fluid in your body, the same thing would happen: the water would enter between the inner and outer cell walls such that the nerves would make less contact than normal.
Good ole Di-Hydrogen Monoxide!