Take the Pain Quiz
What's the most sensitive part of your body? Are women less sensitive to pain than men? Does everyone feel pain? Get answers to these and other questions by taking the pain quiz.
1. Most pain serves no purpose.
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Pain can be a warning that your body is injured or infected. The doubled-over pain of a ruptured appendix will send you straight to the emergency room; without this warning, you could die. This type of acute pain usually lasts until your injury or infection heals.
But not all pain serves a purpose. Pain that lasts long beyond the normal recovery period, such as lower back pain or migraine headache, is called chronic pain, says the American Pain Society. Disabling chronic pain—the type of pain that keeps you from working and enjoying life—should be treated.
2. Everyone feels pain.
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Certain otherwise normal people are born incapable of feeling pain. And while you might think living without pain sounds like a good deal, it’s really not.
Pain is protective; if you don’t have it, you could die because you aren't able to care for yourself.
3. People in a coma can't feel pain.
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Brain scans show that even patients in comas may be aware of their environment and of pain. How much pain a patient feels may depend on the type of coma he or she is in. Patients in a minimally conscious state are more likely to feel pain; patients who are brain dead or in a persistent vegetative state are not likely to feel pain.
4. Headache is the most common type of pain.
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Everybody gets a simple headache now and then.
The National Headache Foundation lists several common types of headache that affect millions of Americans annually.
5. Men get migraine headaches more than women.
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Migraine headaches cause a severe throbbing pain, usually on one side of the head, often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, or dizziness. Nearly 30 million Americans suffer from migraines. Women suffer migraines at least three times as often as men, possibly because of hormonal causes.
6. Women have a higher pain threshold than men.
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It depends on the person, not the person’s gender. Some people have a higher level of natural pain blockers, such as endorphins and serotonin, that act the same way that narcotics do by stopping pain messages from traveling to the brain. What may feel like agony to you might be perceived as mild discomfort by your next-door neighbor, all thanks to these self-narcotics.
7. With enough concentration, you can train your brain to ignore pain.
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The phenomenon of pain is a perception. Your brain can, in effect, amplify the pain experience or turn it down to a whisper. This is how yogis can stick needles into themselves or walk on a bed of hot coals. With sustained concentration, they are able to override the discomfort.
8. Newborns can't feel pain.
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But there was a time when doctors believed babies were unable to feel pain and even operated on them without anesthesia. That view has changed; there is no question that newborns can feel pain and respond to it.
9. You always feel pain in the part of the body where it originates.
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A heart attack, for example, can manifest itself as pain in the left arm. Or tooth pain can be felt as an earache. This is known as referred pain.
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