P&P61

P&P #61 Birth Pains

Laura MacKinnon commented on the latest P&P:

At risk of being labelled pedantic, I wish to address one minor point in your recent P & P-- the comment that some women "never experience the pain of childbirth ... by using epidural analgesia." During childbirth an epidural is given very late in the process, only after dilation and effacement of the cervix to a considerable point. To get to this point requires several hours (up to 24 hr in some women) of various stages of labour, none of which are painfree. The pain escalates with time, and the epidural usually blocks pain (which is indeed exceptional) only at the very late stages of labour.

*** MY COMMENT

Many thanks for your comment. You are quite correct - I paraphrased that comment dramatically and expected some corrections! I should really have stated that all pain tends to progress backwards and forwards along a continuum or work up to a crescendo or peak. What I implied is that some women may not experience the peak pain of childbirth due to intervention by epidural or inhalant analgesics (like the old 'Penthrane').

Elite sports performance might then be associated with one's ability or willingness to operate in a given situation right at or near PEAK PAIN levels (presuming, of course, that one does not protectively lapse into unconsciousness). This might then be a quality possessed by elite athletes, all other things (such as fitness level and skill) being similar or equal.

Perhaps the relevance of childbirth to sport is that, upon seeing and holding her newborn, a mother immediately forgets the many hours of pain, for the end result is more than worth the pain.

*** MY COMMENT

Part of the decrease in pain appears to be a protective reflex. Moreover, profound muscular relaxation can follow a bout of maximal weightlifting training, a method sometimes used by physios to promote relaxation or reduce spasm. Forgetfulness is not a short-term factor, though the weakening of the peak memory may play a significant role in the long-term.

Perhaps champions in sport also experience such "forgetfulness" upon the dais, thus enabling them to return to training through the pain and further improvment in performance.

***MY COMMENT

Sometimes, the athletes derives enormous pleasure from the pain of effort, the working to a momentary failure. Maybe you would refer to this as a type of masochism, so that we could take this P&P further by suggesting that all elite athletes may have more masochistic tendencies than ordinary folk! But then we have to be careful to distinguish between EFFORT PAIN MASOCHISM and INJURY PAIN MASOCHISM.

The latter may include those unusual individuals who derive pain from flagellation etc during the sex act. Even the orgasm may be regarded as a mixed pleasure-pain event, so that those critics who sneer at 'masochistic' athletes ought to examine themselves in that type of situation! Maybe the sex act should also then be used as one of the models to explain the relevance of the pleasure-pain phenomenon in sporting performance! Would such an idea be so outrageous? The pain plot thickens!

You can see where your comment has led - that is why it is so valuable for more users to interact instead of simply reading and passing by to some other page in electronic space!

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