Pain

The pain after my recent bowel surgery was devastating. For weeks, nothing seemed to help, even while I was hospitalized and had access to the best drugs.

The research found a solution to an enduring challenge in both veterinary and human medicine: how to identify pain and distress in individuals who cannot communicate what they are experiencing. 

A study has found that difficult experiences in the first years of life may alter the communication between the brain and the gut and raise the risk of abdominal problems even many years later.