46 Times Patients Reacted To Pain In Ways Medical Professionals Never Saw Coming

Unfortunately, pain is a pretty inevitable part of being human—and as unpleasant as it can be, it’s an important one, too. As registered nurse Angela Morrow writes for Verywell Health, “Pain signals that something is wrong in your body. When injury or disease affects a part of your body, nerve signals travel to and from your brain, creating the sensation of pain.” This can trigger protective reflexes—like quickly pulling our hand away from something hot, seemingly without even thinking about it.

Morrow explains that pain can be classified in several ways, including by duration (acute, subacute, or chronic), location (localized, generalized, or diffuse), and source (such as tissue damage, nerve damage, or problems affecting the internal organs or musculoskeletal system). There are also more specific types, including pain caused by normally non-painful stimuli (allodynia), exaggerated pain responses (hyperalgesia), pain felt in an amputated limb (phantom pain), and pain that returns despite treatment (breakthrough pain).

Despite these classifications, pain can be notoriously hard to describe, measure, and treat. Part of the reason is that although almost everyone has experienced some version of pain, it is deeply subjective, and each person has their own threshold and tolerance for it.

Pain threshold and pain tolerance are not one and the same, although both depend on complex interactions between our nerves and brain. Pain threshold refers to the point at which a stimulus becomes painful. As Jacquelyn Cafasso writes for Healthline, it basically refers to “the minimum point at which something, such as pressure or heat, causes you pain.”

Our pain tolerance, on the other hand, refers to how much pain we can endure before we feel the need to do something about it. That “could be in the form of pain relief medications, a heat or cold pack, relaxation techniques, acupuncture or even support from a friend or family member,” according to Cindy Jones, an associate professor of behavioral sciences. It’s basically what Cafasso describes as “the maximum amount of pain you can handle.”

Everyone’s tolerance is different, and as Cafasso outlines, it can depend on a range of factors. These include a person’s genetics, age and gender. But one’s pain tolerance can also change with chronic illness, mental illness, and stress. Social isolation, past experiences of pain, and one’s upbringing and learned coping strategies can also influence one’s responses to pain. Nerve cells also play a part, and nerve damage can affect how we experience and tolerate pain.