Pain detection

How a bag of soup helps me detect pain – Toronto Acupuncture Clinic – Samuel Lo

  • "How do you find the pain is?"  "How do you know where the pain is?"  Toronto Acupuncture Clinic

When a patient who is experiencing pain enters my office, one of their most common questions is: “How do you know where the pain is?”   Here’s what I tell them:   Imagine your body as a bag of soup with multiple layers.   Now picture pressing your finger into that bag of soup…   …What happened to your finger?   Well, your finger would be absorbed by the bag of soup. But if you remove your finger, the bag would return to its original shape, wouldn’t it?   Typically, in a healthy individual, it’s always the same process: your finger gets absorbed when you press it into a bag of soup. And when you remove it, the soup returns to its original shape.   So what does a bag of soup have to do with pain?   Here’s the secret sauce: I can find pain when your soup pushes […]