Pain tolerance varies from person to person and can be affected by emotional state. Men generally have a higher pain tolerance than women. Pain threshold is different from pain tolerance. Exposure to pain does not increase pain tolerance, but can make the body more sensitive to pain in the future. Rapid pain management is important for trauma patients to prevent extra-sensitive pain response. Patients tolerate pain better when they have company.
Pain tolerance is the term used to explain the amount of pain someone can endure before suffering an emotional or physical breakdown. Pain tolerance varies from person to person and can also vary depending on the emotional state someone was in before the painful situation began. In general, research indicates that men have a higher level of pain tolerance than women.
Pain tolerance is different from pain threshold. Pain threshold is the term used to describe the level of pain required to generate a pain response in an individual. Someone may have a very high pain threshold and low pain tolerance, for example.
Some people mistakenly believe that pain tolerance can be increased by exposure to pain. The idea makes sense, exposing the body to increasing levels of pain will help it develop immunity to pain. In real life, however, the opposite is true. The body, once exposed to high levels of pain, becomes more sensitive to it. This makes the body’s response to pain more dramatic when exposed to pain in the future.
The risk of developing this extra-sensitive pain response is why rapid pain management is a priority for trauma patients. By treating pain early, clinicians are able to keep it under control throughout the patient’s recovery period. Medical studies have also suggested that giving pain medication to a patient before they undergo surgery allows the patient’s pain after surgery to be treated with lower levels of pain medication.
Pain and pain tolerance can have a huge effect on how patients respond to treatment. For this reason, the body’s response to pain is studied with great interest by researchers. An interesting piece of information learned through this research is that patients suffering from pain tolerate it much better when they have company. Whether the person who is with them during the painful event is a friend or a stranger, only the presence of another human helps reduce the level of pain they perceive.
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