When we get hurt why is our reaction to touch/grab the area that hurts?
In: Other
Like a double edged reaction.
1st part is to protect the area from further pain and the second as a primal emergency medical need like clutching a more major bleed in an attempt to stem the blleding (to stop what is inside from getting outside)
We want to protect ourselves from further damage and we want to limit the damage already done to us.
To check what’s going on, it could be a bug or animal bite or a particularly sharp stick. Touch lets you tell what it is so you can react appropriately. The faster you have this info the faster you can react, so reflexively grabbing the area in pain makes sense.
A question like this doesn’t have a definitive answer. We can’t know what exactly lead to us do something like this, we can only spectate based on what we observe.
That a possible reason would be to put our attention to the injury to make us assess it and treat it in whatever way we might be able.
You feel it and assess it. Is it bleeding? Is there a large wound? Is there something continuing to injure you like some stinging insect or such?
So touching it assures your body it is being tended to and releases endorphins to ease the pain to allow you to do so with less pain to distract you but enough to ensure you know itnis still injured.
In addition to things other people have said about why it’s a reflex, applying mild pressure over the area can actually lessen the pain. This is because the nerves that detect the pain in your skin can actually interfere with the nerves next to them. This helps them tell you exactly where an injury is. If 3 nerves cover the area that is injured, but the impact was right in the middle causing it send a slightly stronger pain signal than the other 2, it dampens the signal coming from the other 2 to increase the difference in signal and allow the brain to more easily pinpoint where the strongest signal is coming from. Applying pressure over a larger area (like putting your whole hand over where a bee has stung you) can cause this interference so that the nerves at the site of the impact don’t send quite so strong a signal.
Please forgive me if that’s hard to follow – I took physiology 5 years ago and it’s much simpler with diagrams!
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