For example, I had mild toothache on and off since July and paracetamol pretty much did nothing. I may as well have been eating smarties, then I had the offending tooth out and the bruising on my jaw from the injections has been much more painful but paracetamol stops the pain within 15 mins. Why didn’t it work for the much milder toothache?
In: 10
You should read my other comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zn74g7/eli5_why_do_certain_painkillers_work_for_certain/j0fyxcv/)
To answer your question more directly though, pain is super complicated.
Pain is foremost a psychological phenomenon, not physical like most people think.
Pain happens inside the brain and can be influenced by a lot of factors. Painkillers will change the way the brain handles pain responses, but again it can get pretty complicated.
There are a whole bunch of physical factors that will change the perception of pain, like the type of pain, the duration of the pain, the intensity of the pain, other physical processes like inflammation and fevers.
And there are also a whole bunch of psychological factors that will change the perception of pain like mood, emotions, conscious attention, distraction, etc.
There’s no short answer here unfortunately, and it’s really anyone’s guess what happened in your specific case.
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