ELI5- Do things hurt even when they don’t seem to? For example, if I hit myself but it doesn’t necessarily hurt, does my body still register it as painful? Do people with a high pain tolerance still register the pain but just don’t feel it?

Question

ELI5- Do things hurt even when they don’t seem to? For example, if I hit myself but it doesn’t necessarily hurt, does my body still register it as painful? Do people with a high pain tolerance still register the pain but just don’t feel it?

In: Biology

Answer 1

If there’s no pain, there’s 2 reasons why. Your body either isn’t being harmed enough (or has become too harmed) for the nerves to go “Hey! Stop that!”, or something is stopping your brain from recieving those signals (medication, disease etc).

An example is digestion. Digestion is exruciatingly painful, but our brain is just ignoring it, since that is what it’s meant to feel like (plus if you were writing in agony 20000 ago because you could feel your stomach digest, you’d be eaten by whatever lion finds you first).