As an example; a facial pimple.
I’ve experienced it render half of my face slightly swollen and sting to touching anywhere near it. Yet I’ve had other spots burst-through-cleaning and not felt a thing?
I can’t get my head around it.
In: 98
Directly, this is because pimples are parts of the skin that are swollen (and so try to take more space than usual), and we feel pain when things called nerves that go all around hidden in our flesh (like how powerlines are buried in the ground) have their endings pressed against for too hard.
For nerves, some of them work to tell our brain what our body parts are feeling, like when you feel cold, or are touching something fluffy, or touching something smooth, or get pricked by a needle. And some others pass the brain’s orders for the body parts to move. Here you can see it’s the first kind we’re talking about. When a nerve ending gets pressed against for too hard, that’s pain. Somewhere in the middle of getting pressed against but it’s not too hard it’ll be itchiness.
So when a swollen part of the skin tries to get bigger, it puts a squeeze on what’s next to it, like when you squeeze a sponge or marshmallow your fingers press against them to make them change shape, also like if we sit close together touching, and not move, and I lean against you. And so, when where the pimple is, and how much swelling there is, and which direction it goes, are all combined in a more unlucky way, they can get a nerve ending pressed against very hard, and you hurt very much. When they’re combined in a more lucky way, you can get away with no nerve endings pressed against to cause pain.
You also know pimple pain feels different than getting pricked by a needle, or stubbing your toe against the door. This is because the size of the spot the pressure is put on, and the time the pressure is there are all different. For one, a swollen part in your skin is there until it gets better, but needles and bumpings are more quickly taken away or stopped. If you sprain your ankle, or hit on something and get a bruise, those can feel different from pimple pain too. Sometimes it swells badly, but you don’t feel as painful as how much it swells. This would be because although there’s much change in the shape of the skin, the nerves that hurt are usually seperated from that change with the swelling in between, and so it’s not the same as with pimples.
Edit: typo and clarity
Latest Answers