I have a high pain threshold!

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It's incredible the amount of people who are very quick to tell me that they have a high pain threshold but do they really? Do they know what the pain threshold even is?
I suspect they don't.

So what is pain threshold anyway?

Mosby (2009) states the following:

"The point at which a stimulus, usually one associated with pressure or temperature, activates pain receptors and produces a sensation of pain. Individuals with low pain thresholds experience pain much sooner and faster than those with higher thresholds; individuals' reactions to stimulation of pain receptors vary."

Put simply, it is when there is enough stimulus to make the pain nerve fire. So the threshold required for an action potential at a synapse in a C fibre neurone.

So what patients are referring to then is their pain tolerance. This is defined as:

"the highest intensity of painful stimulation that a tested subject is able to tolerate." (Farlex 2012).

So the question everyone wants to know the answer to: Is there a difference between males and females?

 Threshold:

Yes:
Healthy females exhibited significantly lower mean pain pressure thresholds than males (Chesterton et al 2003).


Tolerance: 

Depends:
There is strong evidence that females tolerate less thermal (heat, cold) and pressure pain than males but it is not the case for tolerance to ischemic pain, which is comparable in both sexes (Racine et al 2012).

Mogil (2012) found that some evidence was inconclusive in finding differences between the sexes but when differences were found it was almost unanimously showing that women have a higher sensitivity and lower tolerance to pain than men.

However!

In a later study, Racine et al (2012) found that the tolerance was not different but actually this means men are less tolerant as they receive pain signals later due to the higher pain threshold.

Now this article is not going to go into the more complex elements of pain as it would turn into a novel but lets just say that these finding are average generalisations and pain thresholds and tolerances change with things like weather, sleep and mood etc. So be careful or you could be on receiving end of some pain if you start saying you have a higher pain threshold etc. 



So if you would like to book in for an assessment then contact me via any of the below methods:

Telephone: 01782 771861
Mobile: 07866195914

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