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A woman who doesn't feel pain

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Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#71

I knew a girl who couldn't get drunk (bottle of vodka and no effect), she had to fake it sometimes not to look alcoholic. She said she wasn't the only one in the family.

The story makes no sense. She probably was an alcoholic.

If she wasn't, why would she consume an entire bottle of vodka?

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#72
post #37

I don’t think that this is a good thing to have. Leprosy patients lose their fingers because of lack of pain.

I know that's part of it, but there's got to be something more going on with leprosy patients. Random bruises and scratches do not normally fester until things start falling off, even if you ignore them.

> even if you ignore them

But you don't ignore them. If you have a bruise on your shin, you may not think much about it, but it's pretty unlikely that you'll bump your leg just as hard again on the coffee table on the same spot.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to meditate to achieve this. You just need nitrous oxide. This is great for going to the dentist, but I suppose it's not so great for managing chronic pain, however.

Wouldn't it be more natural to say, you don't need nitrous oxide to achieve this, you can practice to manage chronic pain.

"Natural" is just a buzzword. People have eaten plants for medicinal purposes since pre-historic times. Why should we shy away from advances in medicine and force the patients to re-wire their brains instead?

Meditation is unnatural. The natural thing is to experience pain when something painful happens.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#74
post #29

Similar: Indian chef dips his BARE HANDS in searing 200C cooking oil to fry street food... and doesn't suffer any burns... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317037/Indian-chef...

This has to be complete BS or he doesn't have an organic hand. Protein WILL NOT stand up to that heat.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#75
post #52
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experienced meditators are supposed to achieve this. I have read that they can have surgery without anesthetics (Gandhi supposedly did it too). They feel the pain but they do not suffer from it.

source please.

Performing a double blind test on whether meditation can help you avoid pain would probably be unethical. Most of the claims about meditation are not verified.

You could certainly expect to avoid some pain by meditating. Maybe you picked up a coffee cup that is a little too warm, and you just "mind-over-matter" through it. Sure.

But if you got shot? Well, I can't imagine a scientist is going to feel comfortable actually testing anyone claiming they could meditate their way through that.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#76

You don't understand how important a feedback signal pain is until it's gone. I dated a girl who had a brain tumor removed as a child. As a result of this she had an incredibly high tolerance for pain. I don't mean stub-your-toe tolerance. I mean beat-me-with-a-belt-so-I-can-feel-something tolerance. Obviously it made for some interesting fun. Eventually I had to stop dating her out of fear I was going to permanently…

I'm really curious... (I'm a sadist, but only with consent and permanent injury is a hard nope) did you try electricity? I've played with several folks with high pain tolerance, and electroplay really seems to "cut through" everybody's defenses. But it's not obvious how that would go, if the neurological signals are getting blocked...

She wanted to. By then I was tired of all the games. Not my thing.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#77
post #45

For some insight into the value of pain, and the hazards of being without it, Pain: the Gift Nobody Wants (also published as The Gift of Pain ) by Paul Brand & Philip Yancey is a fascinating read. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pain-Nobody-Wants-Paul-Brand/dp/006... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gift-Pain-Hurt-What-About/dp/031022...

For people suffering from chronic pain, the benefits of turning off pain completely would far outweigh the risks.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#78
post #75
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

source please.

Performing a double blind test on whether meditation can help you avoid pain would probably be unethical. Most of the claims about meditation are not verified. You could certainly expect to avoid some pain by meditating. Maybe you picked up a coffee cup that is a little too warm, and you just "mind-over-matter" through it. Sure. But if you got shot? Well, I can't imagine a scientist is going to feel comfortable actua…

> Performing a double blind test on whether meditation can help you avoid pain would probably be unethical

Um... how does one even perform such a test? It's not like you don't know you're meditating.

Re: A woman who doesn't feel pain

#80
post #30

I read in New Scientist that they've discovered a way in mice to turn off the connection between pain receptors and the emotional response to pain in the brain. So the mouse feels the pain in the sense of recognising it, but doesn't have a negative feeling associated with it. That's like a half-way point; you wouldn't injure yourself accidentally (as the woman), but you also wouldn't suffer if enduring chronic pain.…

Experienced meditators are supposed to achieve this. I have read that they can have surgery without anesthetics (Gandhi supposedly did it too). They feel the pain but they do not suffer from it.

I get cluster headaches or something similar - still being diagnosed. Anyways, they're extremely painful, by far the most pain I've ever experienced. I have a meditation/visualization I do that largely negates the pain. I actually got the idea from The Dresden Files books, oddly enough - the main character does something similar at a few points throughout the series.

It works, but only if I can wholly concentrate on it.

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