eli5 Why cold things on the skin make it feel numb
In: Biology
Your body is meant to operate at a relatively certain temperature. We’re warm blooded, our body generated heat to keep us warm, and sweats to cool us off.
Our bodies need to do this because the cells and more specifically the proteins inside the cells only operate well at certain temperatures. High temperatures can even “denature” or destroy the proteins (this is why cooking food makes it safe to eat, by killing bacteria/viruses by destroying the proteins that make them up.
A similar loss of function also happens with a drop in temperature, when you put ice on your skin, you really cool down the area the ice is applied, because if this the nerves up near you skin are going to stop working as well, and send fewer signals to the brain, the nerves in charge of “feeling”. So instead you feel nothing or numbness.
This also combines with the fact that icing like this remove inflammation (or all the extra blood rushing to a damaged area to try to help fix it). Inflammation can make an injury hurt even more as it gets more sensitive, by icing it you restrict the capillaries that are delivering the blood to that area, helping reduce swelling/inflammation.
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