Dr. Aneesh Singla

It's sounding an alarm that, hey, pay attention to me, there's a problem here.

And that's when we have to go and investigate.

All of the above.

I think that your example of hitting yourself with a hammer, unfortunately, I've experienced that as well.

Yes.

Well, that's exactly.

So I learned something from that pain.

And that is, you know, don't hold your finger too close to the nail when you're using the hammer.

Right.

So so that's that's how pain actually helped me, as it probably helped you.

But but essentially when you when you in that case, yes, you you you caused trauma from the hammer actually hitting your finger.

you cause tissue damage.

The nerves in your finger perceive that inflammation and that damage and sent the signal up the nerves in your hand, up your arm, up into the spinal cord in the neck, and ultimately to your brain.

And that's how you actually are feeling the pain.

Great question.

So a common medication that we use for pain is, say, run-of-the-mill ibuprofen, as you mentioned.

And what ibuprofen and other medicines like it, Motrin, Advil, et cetera, what they do is they block an enzyme called cyclooxygenase.

And those enzymes are responsible for producing lipids called prostaglandins.

And prostaglandins generate pain and inflammation.

And that's how you get a sense of the fact that you've got the response to an injury.