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Carlos Goicoechea, professor of Pharmacology and one of the directors of the seminar points out that “recently chronic pain has finally been considered a disease in itself, and not like until now when it was thought that pain was the consequence of a disease, and that if we were able to treat the disease we would always go to be able to treat the pain.”
The course 'Deconstructing pain and everything to the contrary' will take place from June 27 to July 1 and will be held at the URJC Alcorcón campus.
Chronic illness is an alteration of the system that transmits pain, “this alteration can be maintained even though the cause that initially caused that pain has disappeared. From this point of view, our main interest is to make the students of our course aware of the need to consider pain as a disease and to treat it independently of the cause that caused it”, comments the professor.
“Treat pain regardless of its cause”
It is now known that chronic pain is an alteration of the system that transmits pain, and that this alteration can be maintained even if the cause that initially caused it has disappeared. “From this point of view, our main interest is to make the students of our course aware of the need to consider pain as a necessity, and to attend to it independently of the cause that caused it”, indicates Goicoechea.
The objective of this course is to be very educational, so it will have a variety of speakers who can provide up-to-date information first-hand and who can even tell their own experiences related to discomfort.
"We want it to be understood that pain can be seen from many points of view, that we all more or less understand something about it because we have all had, have or are going to have it in our lives," says Goicoechea.
The course will also talk about pain from different prisms, he indicates, "we talk about pain from culture, music, sports, dance, we are even going to have a cooking workshop to talk about anti-inflammatory foods."
This seminar will be inaugurated with the participation of the culture delegate of the Madrid City Council, Andrea Levy, who suffers from Fibromyalgia and who will show, despite the difficulties, that pain does not incapacitate you for everything. Her testimony will enable students to learn about this facet of those who suffer from chronic pain and who can still carry out various activities as far as possible.
In this sense, Professor Goicoechea comments on the importance of engineering in the treatment of pain and of the mathematical scientific developments that can be created to help patients predict pain or measure its intensity, something that until now has not been can determine, beyond the patient's explanation of what he is suffering from.
Another important topic, which will be discussed in the seminar, is the psychological approach, as well as the behavior of relatives and caregivers of patients with chronic pain, who must have a lot of calm and patience to understand the difficult situation that the person may be going through.
Pain is a global health problem
The URJC has a Faculty of Health Sciences, on this aspect, Goicoechea comments that "within this faculty, all our students have to understand and know that pain as a health issue is a global problem and that we can all help and we can all support each other. That is why we like it so much when we do this course, to see that we have nursing, medicine, psychology students, as well as caregivers, family members and all those interested in knowing a little more about this subject, discovering new information and new points of view”