What determines how high you pain threshold is?

Question

that should be 'your'

Answer 1

no one is answering your ACTUAL question
of what DETERMINES the pain threshold..

mostly its genetics, coupled with learned behaviour, (ie how parents re-act to small injuries, response to a child falling over and getting a little scrape on the knee)
It is common to all people yet unique to all of us, childbirth is a very good example, one will say how awful it was, yet another will say it was easy, the likelihood is that the pain was very similar, just dealt with differently..

Other factors affect pain thresholds,
such as age, gender,
physical conditioning,
emotional state, and attitude.
Factors that may increase threshold include anxiety, fear, anger, depression, introversion, sympathy, and whether you're on medication/taking drugs

Answer 2

This varies from person to person. While some people can withstand excrusiating pain, other can't even stand to see some one with a headache, or even get a sympathy headache. This is all determined by your nervous system and your gentic make up along with years of mental conditoning. If you were a football player most of your life and had broken bones and injuries then you would become used to of have a increased tolerance to pain compaired to say someone like a house wife that would cry when she broken a finger nail. So you life and your mental ability to handle stress and pain have a great deal to do with ones threshold. While the hospitals use a Wong-Baker scale for pain from 1-10 this is a even scale, Because everyone is not the same a person with a kidney stone may say that it's a 10 while a mother of 6 children may say that is a 5. Both of these answers still indicate that the pain level is above a acceptable level and require attention.

Answer 3

Pain is identical in a healthy human body. We have the same number of nerve receptors in our bodies by genetic build. With only slight differences we all transmit sensation at the same rate through our central nervous system. If you and I are both pricked with a pin in the same location we feel nearly identical pain sensations. What's different is how our brains process that pain. Pain tollerance or threshold is a sense-memory. The Pain sensation is measured against previous experience to indicate the level of alarm your body will react with. That's why a skinnned knee is traumatic at 5 but just annoying at 25, it's also why a pin prick to your finger might make you scream but a diabetic would hardly bat an eye. In short the scale of pain you can endure is determined by the degree and inensity of pain that you're experienced in the past.

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What determines how high you pain threshold is?

Answer 5

Well, if you want to increase it, you need to send pain signals to your brain and consciously not react to them. Try pinching yourself in various places. Then keep doing it harder but not until you bleed. You can also put a needle through the outer layer of your skin, also in a way that doesn't bleed. That will help increase your threshold with no scaring. Is that what you wanted? Oh, and don't forget that pain is all in your head. The link doesn't exactly deal with this but try to step back and think about what is going on in your head when you experience the pain. So like the dude below says, more pain, more gain in threshold.

Answer 6

What you find to be painful. If you find being pricked by a pin to be painful then you could be said to have a low pain threshold. If on the other hand you find that you can withstand being punched in the face you would be a person with a high pain threshold.

Answer 7

Physically, it is related to your central nervous system and body/brain chemistry. ie. how strong & frequent and what kind of pain signals the nervous system sends to the brain, and how many and which chemicals the brain produces to cope (e.g. endorphins, endocrines, dopamine, etc. - the body's natural pain killers).

However, ultimately, the amount of pain you can cope with is determined by the mind & how you interpret the information in your brain. It has been clinicaly demonstrated that patients under hypnosis can undergo extrememly painful operations without anaesthetic without adverse effects & while being aware of the sensations of pain, but simply not reacting to it in the same way.

I personally have seen this with a hernia operation, and a dentist drilling holes into a patients jaw bone. Therefore, it is a complex inter-dependant relationship between the central nervous sytem, brain chemistry, and the mind.

Answer 8

I'd say experience. It is natural that women have a higher innate pain threshold, but i'd say how much pain and the intensity of that pain that you've experience will algo guide it.

I remember, for example, that a stepped-on ingrown toenail hurt that much more before I took a .22 cal in my calf (accidentally). Now i can honestly say, step right on.

Answer 9

I think a lot has to do with learned behavior (social response) and a certain amount of 'mind-over-matter' or 'displacement'.

I have a stupidly high tollerance for pain compared to most people. It's a mental thing - I just refuse to give in to it. I still feel it, but can mentally tune certain types out. Sharp sudden pain CANNOT be tuned out - but long prolonged pain or pressure can.

By focusing your mind on another body part, say the tip of one finger - the feedback from the painful part is diminished or by 'zoning / phasing out' to create a mental blur. It's weird, but works!!

Answer 10

basically your central nervous system determines pain threshold