Flux,You are correct, I had not defined what a spasm is, and as such I could not give logical credance to my arguments as such. My definistion for spasm as taken from my Chambers Medical Dictionary is :-A sudden, violent, involuntary contraction of a muscle or a group of muscles, attended by pain and interference with function, producing involuntary movement and distortion. So as you can see from my working definition I was always ascribing pain to the spasm. I do concede that other med dictionary definitions do NOT go as far as to mention pain, but rather stop at stating a sudden, violent contraction of a muscle. And yes you are correct, if you take the pain away then it would be hard to know if you are having a spasm.You also quote 'that you are ascribing a spasm to a particular sensation that is not pain' when talking about the 'tightening feeling' but is not the tighteneing just a pain of minimal intensity, becuase how would you know it is tightening otherwise ?Look, I do not want to get into a war of words over this, its just not worth it. I was merely trying to say that from personal experience I know when I am having a spasm I feel pain (I cannot knowingly recognise when I am having a painless spasm as I can not physically see the muscle tightening).Shall we leave it here flux ?Iain