A short excerpt from a YouTube video (creator: LARRUZ) describing the phenomenon "pain inhibits pain": anecdotally introduced (stomping on a foot reduces arm pain), then linked to late-1970s rodent research (Labarre) and a proposed mechanism in which a distal nociceptive stimulus activates a brainstem circuit that sends descending inhibitory signals to the spinal cord, reducing the original pain.
Did you ever walk up to your buddy and say, you know, my arm really hurts. You know, I injured it the other day. And what did. What did your buddy do? They'd stomp on your foot, and you'd say, why the heck did you do that? You and I must have grown up with the same friends. Oh, yeah. And they'd say, well, now doesn't your arm feel better? And I'd be like, well, yeah, it does. And, yeah, I did grow up with those friends. I tell this story to some people, and I sometimes just get the wide eyes like they did. What? Yeah. We are not making recommendations here. We're not making recommendations, but it's a real phenomenon. It was described by Labarre's late 70s, 78, or something like that in rodent models initially. And what happens is that when you engage a nociceptive stimulus or a painful stimulus in a site distal different from where the primary pain is, it engages a brainstem circuit that has descending pathways to the spinal cord and inhibits pain. Amazing. Pain inhibits pain. It works.
