 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. In this video we're going to talk about referred pain. So referred pain is anytime pain is perceived at a different location than where it's actually coming from. So it has to do with the fact that our nervous system, you know, very complex networks of nerves that all converge on the same spinal level. So your brain can be confused where a lot of these visceral signals are getting lost in the noise and your brain is used to receiving information from these somatic receptors. And a lot of times this falls at a dermatome level. So here we see some examples of referred pain and again just caused by this confusion in your brain. The textbook example is going to be the heart attack. So you see the heart there, if someone is having a heart attack they may be feeling pain or some other sensation in the jaw, the neck, the chest or down the left arm. Those are typical heart attack pain symptoms. So that's referred pain. There's nothing wrong with the arm, nothing wrong with the jaw. That's just where the sensation is being sensed. Gallbladder is another really good example. So the gallbladder refers pain to the tip of the right shoulder blade. This happened to me before I had my gallbladder out and I actually was going to the chiropractor and a physical therapist because I was having all this dull, this like toothache pain in my right shoulder blade and they couldn't really find any reason for it and that's why I went for further testing and it was actually my gallbladder. So I was feeling pain in the right shoulder blade but the origin, the source of the pain was the actual gallbladder just like the heart attack one. A few other examples, you probably all heard of an ice cream headache or brain freeze. I like to use the term slurpy tumor but this is an example of referred pain. Either the vagus nerve in the throat or the trigeminal nerve in the palate region there is going to be triggered and that pain is going to be sent to the brain but it's going to confuse it and you're going to feel the sensation in other places. Another example of referred pain would actually be phantom limb pain where someone that doesn't have a limb, they've lost a limb or even were born without it, they're feeling pain in a limb that doesn't exist. So clearly that's an example of referred pain as well. So referred pain is anytime you're having pain and you're feeling it in a different location than where the actual pain is. Okay, I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day, be blessed.