Pain isn't a direct signal from injured tissue but a warning your brain generates. Your nervous system detects a threat like a torn meniscus, and your brain interprets it as danger, sending back the pain signal. It's like a car's dashboard light alerting you to a problem.
Pain is your body's warning sign. So the pain signal goes the other way. So you think that you have an arthritic knee or torn meniscus and you step a certain way and the pain is coming from the knee. It's not really how it works. So what happens is a signal or the nervous system identifies something in the area, the knee, we'll take that example. And senses something it perceives as a threat. So some sort of change, a metabolic change, you know, maybe it is like a tear, that type of change. And it says, I think this is a threat to my survival. And I'm going to send a signal from the brain to the knee and make it hurt there. Just like a dashboard in a car says, okay, that tire's flat, it sends a signal. And so you know what's going on in that location as an attempt to get your attention and the request for change.
