In 90-95% of cases of RAP, a disease or something that doesn’t work is not identified. So why does it hurt?
As recognized by the International Association for the Study of Pain, pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, and each person lives it in a particular way. Pain can only be understood from a biopsychosocial perspective, which means that it is the result of the interaction of different variables.
Thus, we can answer the question “Why does my tummy hurt?” by saying (very briefly) that it is a mixture of biological, psychological and social factors that cause the pain to appear and persist. In each category and depending on each person, we can find many very different factors that end up triggering the pain and causing it to persist.
We think it would very helpful to watch the following video to better understand what we are talking about.
Video: Understanding pain – and what’s to be done about it in 10 minutes! (Deutsches Kinderschmerzzentrum).
- There are some things that can cause pain in some people and not in others. For example, eating a lot can cause stomach pain in one child but not in another.
- Things that can cause pain do not always have the same effect. For example, the nerves related to an exam may cause stomach pain while the nerves related to the novelty of visiting an amusement park do not.
- Some of the things that cause pain only do so if they reach a certain level. For example, exercise is healthy but doing too much can cause pain.
- Sometimes, it is the combination of several things that ends up causing pain. For example, the combination of not having rested properly with the fact of having an exam may cause stomach pain more easily than if there is only one of the two factors.
What is more important is to see what things accentuate the pain in our case and find alternatives that help to address these things. In general, we should not try to avoid situations that cause pain; it is better to face them and continue with our activities.
In any case, the pain is always real. In the following video, you can see an example of a situation of recurrent abdominal pain.