Pain, it can be acute or chronic, sharp dull throbbing or burning. It can be physical or
emotional, even phantom. Just seeing pain in others can causes distress, but what is pain,
why does it affect us, why is it so difficult to treat, how much is actual discomfort, and
how much is in our minds?

To find out, I'm heading to London's Dana Center where you eat, drink, socialize and learn
in an atmosphere that's both relaxing and unintimidating. Science in the news and on the cutting edge has discussed with experts. Most events are free. Tonight's event in pursuit of pain is organized by Elaine Snell.

The Dana Center is part of a science museum and where is the science museum has gone for this Fabulous, only these wonderful items and exhibits. There isn't touch your place to talk. More and more issues are coming out now in medicine and science. Well, we actually have to kind of make quite an important life choices things like stem cells and genetics. So er, this is how the Dana Center came about, if we wanted to break down all the barriers, we wanted the speakers to be in the most of the audience and relax that atmosphere very informal. And for that to be a real dialogue.

Back to, pain.

In a nutshell, what, what is pain?

Pain is whatever you want really. It is quite difficult to come to fight pain.
How much of pain is, is in your head?

Some of this, some of this in your head are, obviously, most of it is because you are in pain and you know the reasons for the pain. I think most difficult pain to explain is where you haven't injured yourself there's obviously nothing wrong with you, but you are in pain. That's neurogenic pain, because your nerve system is misbehaving in some way and producing pain sensations.

What about the, er, phantom pain, I mean people with, with missing limb to their hand hurts, but they don't physically have a hand there, I mean, how, what, is this a similar type of pain?

We still have a map in your body of where all things are, so people who've lost their legs can still feel pain in the missing leg, in the missing toe and say it's really painful there because the central nerve system only has that map with the, the leg still there even though it's missing.

With so many variations of pain, how do you treat it? There are a number of traditional medical remedies and more are being developed every day. However, many people are looking to alternative therapies to treat pain.

How does acupuncture help pain?

You know, by medical sets, and they took about acupuncture, blocking certainly in nerve pathways. All the pathways which are responsible for transporting pain to the brain. So they are actively blocked by the acupuncture stimulus and there's another theory where by, um, giving acupuncture to our patients. Eventually used to the release of more thing like chemicals in the brain which also, kill pain and that's a nice very powerful painkiller.

Maggie Heywood deals with chronic bad pain every day. But here could be an answer. Michael
H, from University College London, presents his research into using plants to treat pain. He
is paving the way to use plants such as cannabis and devil's claw to alleviate various types
of pain.

My daughter is a student nurse, and we felt that this talk tonight was deeply appropriate.

I've seen people first time to appreciate the pain, so um, you have just wanna know how to
treat it, really.

It is a valuable aspect of human body, I think it's also on that, if you don't have pain, you are in trouble. We need pain.