Pain Reduced

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923125111.htm
Scientists have discovered why people tend to hold their hands together when they have received any type of pain. This is because when one person holds his or her hands together, it changes the way that a brain receives and interprets the pain. Levels of acute pain are not just dependent on the signals that are sent to the brain, but it also depends on how the brain would mesh together all the signals to a large overview of the whole body. Scientists performed some experiments of putting two fingers in hot water and the middle finger in cold water, and the middle finger was said to be in pain. They tried to see if two fingers from the other hand would reduce the pain, but it didn't work; all three fingers from the unaffected hand had to have been in contact with the affected hand in order for the pain to be reduced. This procedure was something called Thermal Grill Illusion (or TGI for short.), which is basically like phantom pain, as the pain is somewhat not real. After testing, the scientists had found out that TGI is reduced only when all three unaffected fingers are touching the other fingers, and it can reduce the TGI as much as 64%.

I had already known some information about this, but I didn't know about all of it. I thought that this article was interesting, as it told ways to reduce the feeling of pain throughout the body, mainly by self-hand-to-hand contact. I thought that their test was pretty neat too; they put the index finger and ring finger in warm water, and the middle finger was placed in cold water, only to show that the middle finger had succumbed to TGI. This article made me think of how often we think we're in pain, when it may only be an illusion. So whenever I think my hands are hurting, I'll just hold my hands together and see what happens, and hopefully the pain goes away.