The European Journal of Pain has published a study that “found people who have been subjected to torture have different responses to pain than people who haven’t — forever”:
In line with previous research, the torture survivors “exhibited generalized alterations in pain perception and modulation,” meaning they felt more pain than most people when responding to the same kind of stimulus. Their bodies were also less able to “modulate” that pain’s effects. The human body usually responds to pain dynamically, essentially distributing it. The ex-POWs bodies exhibited a worse ability to regulate physical pain than those of the soldiers who had not been taken prisoner.
The study could not determine whether the evidence recorded now, 40 years after the war, were the result of the original experience of torture exclusively, or if four decades of chronic pain afterwards also influenced the breakdown of the body’s pain regulation mechanism. In either case, the study recommended a conception of torture that suggests a physical therapy response to the likelihood of long-term pain problems.
The Dish 