People have a high regard for individuals whose pain tolerance
exceed beyond expectations. The Guinness
Book of World Records has a long list of personalities who have defied
different forms of pain that come from bee and scorpion stings, snake bites, as
well as pain from car crashes, fire accidents, and the like.
Pain tolerance is defined as the duration or intensity of
pain that a person is willing to endure at any given time. Based on observation, tolerance for pain
varies from person to person, and may even fluctuate depending on the severity
of the pain. A number of factors such as sex, age, race and ethnicity,
motivation to endure pain, past experiences with pain, coping skills, and
energy level --- all influence a person's pain tolerance.
The point at which a person feels pain is called a pain
threshold. People don't experience the
same intensity of pain from the same stimuli, and no uniform relationship
exists between tissue damage and pain. Pain intensity, duration, and other
characteristics can vary among patients who've undergone the same procedure.
Most people have the misconception that past experiences
with pain increase pain tolerance. On the contrary, repeated experience with
pain can make a person be aware of how severe pain can become and how
difficult it is to get relief. Therefore, it is possible that someone who has
repeated experiences with pain may have a higher level of anxiety and less pain
tolerance.
Society has always expected men to be tough in the face of
danger. Indeed, a man's higher tolerance
for pain is not just about machismo and male chauvinism but has a
physiological basis. Research shows that
difference in sex/gender influence pain perception, where women usually display
lower pain tolerance than men. However,
it is unknown whether the mechanisms underlying these differences are hormonal,
genetic or psychosocial in origin.
According to some researchers, men can be
more motivated to express tolerance for pain due to masculine stereotyping,
while feminine stereotyping encourages pain expression and lower pain
tolerance. In a number of studies, racial and ethnic differences in pain
sensitivity and pain response found out that African-Americans and Hispanics
tend to have lower thresholds of pain tolerance. In similar experiments,
pain-study participants from Nepal and India had higher pain tolerance than
their Western counterparts.
These findings suggest that something in the brain’s
pain-processing and pain-killing systems may vary by race and ethnicity.
“There’s much we still don’t understand about why these health disparities
based upon race and ethnicity exist, so more research is needed. We hope our
work will increase awareness of this issue among patients and providers alike,”
said lead author Carmen R. Green, M.D., an Anaesthesiologist and Pain
Management Specialist at the University of Michigan Health System. Green chairs
the APS Special Interest Group on racial and ethnic disparities in pain.
Different studies have different claims on age as a factor
affecting pain tolerance. One study
suggested that pain tolerance decreases with age. In another study, children of all ages tend
to perceive more pain than adults which meant that as people grow older, pain
tolerance increases. It appears that, with increasing age, tolerance to
cutaneous pain increases and tolerance to deep pain decreases.
An experiment on motivation to endure pain with a monetary incentive
was conducted by Roger B. Fillingim, Ph.D., of the Department of Operative
Dentistry at the University of Florida and the Gainesville VA Medical Centre in
Gainesville, Fla.
According to Fillingim, the monetary incentive did not
influence pain responses, but the relationship between cardiovascular measures
and pain responses was influenced by the incentive manipulation. Specifically,
low incentive subjects with higher blood pressure at the start of the study
period tended to tolerate pain better. However, this association was not found
in the high incentive subjects. For the high incentive subjects, a leap in
blood pressure, which is a sign of being engaged in a task, was associated with
having higher pain tolerance.
“Additional research is needed to replicate these findings
and to further elucidate the relationships among motivation, gender roles, and
pain responses,” he concluded.
Understanding the detrimental effects of unrelieved pain,
such as depressed immune function, decreased subcutaneous oxygenation leading
to infection, and respiratory dysfunction have resulted in pain management to
minimize, if not totally avoid, enduring as much pain as possible. Such pain
management emphasizes establishing a comfort/function goal with people suffering
from pain, making it easier to perform important activities, such as coughing
and deep breathing postoperatively.
A patient may become distressed if the expectation of pain
tolerance is not met. Reassuring the patient can help ease the distress.
Patients should be encouraged to use pain relief medications and treatments to
reduce their pain to the level that makes it easy for them to function.
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