How does your body decide how much something hurts? Why might skinning your elbow, banging it into a wall, or getting stung there by a bee all hurt different amounts if none of them leave lasting damage and are in the same place?
In: 8
The type of damage is quite different.
Skinning your elbow breaks the skin, sometimes that bares nerve endings to the air. Banging it into the wall put a lot of instant pressure on the nerves, but they stay intact and in place. Bee stings are accompanied by poison which can spread slightly through your arm.
Combination of nerve density and the type of injury, which relates to how much antagonism happens at the site. When you cut yourself, you anger a bunch of neurons at the site AND your immune system will recruit a bunch of inflammatory factors as part of dealing with the microbes that have been introduced at the wound. These combine to make a wound site that can be painful for days as your body fights the infection, and that red, pulsing site of inflammation actually assist with this process. In contrast, just banging your elbow into something might break a few blood vessels to make a bruise but your immune system isn’t needed since you didn’t invite any invaders to the party. Lastly, bee stings (and other bites and stings) introduce a chemical that amplifies the pain signals (on purpose, to deter you from bothering the bees). This venom can make the pain disproportionately worse than an equivalent sting you would feel, say, from a hypodermic needle.
To add to what people have said:
While those injuries don’t leave permanent damage, they all have bring risks to your body and your body “wants” you to protect those injuries in different ways and to prevent them from happening again.
It’s important to be aware of the sting of a grazed elbow so you don’t let things which might cause infection come into contact with it. It’s important to avoid banging your bruises which could cause or worsen internal bleeding. And it’s important to flee from the bee before its friends come for you (also the open wound caused by the stinger can get infected so you don’t want to touch it to things, and the bee venom is designed in part to cause a painful histamine reaction to turn you away from the hive.)
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