How are our bodies able to differentiate between cuts, burns, punctures, bruises, scratches etc through pain and how do they heal differently?
In: Biology
A few things:
1. Depth of injury. Injuries to different layers of skin feel and heal differently. I’ll spare the anatomy lesson, but a paper cut disappears after a week with no scarring but hurt like heck. Really deep injuries won’t hurt if the nerves get wrecked, but can take ~3+ weeks to fully close before leaving scars. And it’ll never feel quite the same again because things like nerves typically don’t regenerate. There’s some fantastic charts about this online.
2. Continuous wound surface area. Missing skin regenerates using progenitor cells found at the base of each hair follicle. The new cells can only travel a certain radius from their starting point, so small puncture wounds can look much nicer when healed than larger scrapes. Side bar: as someone who’s always tripping, I’m veryyy wary of laser removal of leg hairs.
3. Type of insult: Not sure how these might FEEL different, but different insults def bring their own specialties to the injury game.
1. Burns bring damage over time (wounds get larger if the “i’m in danger” zones can’t be saved), inflammation (very painful), dehydration (impairs healing), and massive infection risk (bugs love cooked tissues).
2. Bruises are focused on capillaries/blood vessels/iron-related oxidative damage (colorful!).
3. Cuts/scratches/punctures are weak to harboring debris/contaminants/bacteria which can extend the pain, impair healing, and cause scarring. Plus they can be deceptively deep — be careful folks!
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