5 Unusual Facts About Pain That Most People Don’t Know

Everyone experiences pain without exception. Someone more often and someone less. The feeling of pain is very individual and the same effect in two people causes a different reaction. Someone faints from a regular injection and someone like the American runner Manteo Mitchell continues running a marathon with a broken leg. Here are some facts about pain that you probably didn’t know:

1. Pain Is Useful
Do not be surprised that pain has a protective function. Its task is to make you understand that something is wrong with the body. People who do not experience pain (yes, such people exist) usually die at a fairly early age. They do not feel that they have been injured or burned and therefore do not have the ability to prevent subsequent injuries. Immunity to pain means are bodies are less protected.

2. Perception of Pain Depends on Gender
Most women are destined to experience extreme pain and we are talking about natural childbirth. Nature made sure that women are more equipped to endure this painful event. Their specific sex hormones can dull the feeling of pain. The “weaker sex” has a higher pain threshold than the “strong” one. In men, adrenaline is responsible for suppressing pain. It is a stress hormone that is produced under extreme conditions.

3. Psychogenic Pain Is Real
It often happens that a person experiences severe pain while the body is absolutely healthy. “They are pretending,” you think and you will be right but only in part. The pain that this person experiences is real, not imagined. This pain has no physical cause but it is no less painful than physical.

Often the cause of such pain is an unresolved problem or severe stress. Any organ can become the center of this pain. If the emotional problem is not resolved for a long time, a person may develop a real disease such as a peptic ulcer or irritable bowel syndrome. Such diseases are called psychosomatic.

4. Our Body Has a “Pain Memory”
A person with an amputated arm or leg may experience phantom pains for a long time. The limb is gone but the person feels pain as if it’s still there. A scientist at the University of Massachusetts believes that the “center of pain” in the brain preserves reports of all the pain impulses that have ever entered it. Phantom pains are caused by the fact that the brain “remembers” pain that arose when a part of the body was lost.

5. Swear Words Reduce Pain
Hit and swear loudly? Uncultured but the latest research shows that by doing so you reduce your pain. British pain doctors from Keeley University conducted an interesting study. Volunteers were divided into two groups and were invited to put their hands in icy water.

The first group was allowed to use any swear words during the experiment and the second was allowed to pronounce only one phrase containing decent words only. For forty minutes of the experimenter, the doctors monitored changes in the activity of the “pain” center in the subjects' brains and recorded the reactions expressing a feeling of pain.

It turned out that swindlers were able to tolerate low temperatures for 35 seconds longer than people who had to restrain themselves. The main researcher, Dr. Richard Stevens, explained this by the fact that the use of swear words contributes to the production of hormones of happiness in the body, endorphins that are able to dull the pain.