Why do splinters hurt so much more than cuts?
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splinters often penetrate some flesh, whereas cuts merely scratch the first few layer of skin. since splinters go deeper, they are more painful.
it could also be attributed to the fact that splinters are pretty much tiny spikes and when you don’t pull them out, they hurt more. you are moving around and the spikey piece will move around, causing more pain in the flesh.
Blood from a cut will clot over the wound and cover the exposed nerves sending out pain signals. Splinters are small enough that they don’t trigger bleeding. This means the splinter surface is constantly rubbing against exposed nerves, causing pain. Over time your body will wrap the splinter in a fiber shell to isolate it from the body.
This is also why paper cuts hurt so much. The paper cut is deep enough to expose nerves to signal pain but not deep enough to draw blood and cover the cut.
Our fingers( and palm) has the most densely packed nerve endings which can easily pick up stimulus like pain/ heat etc,
These pain receptors in the skin ( nociceptors) lie on the surface and deep layers of the palm), areas where Splinters actually reach, they pick up on the stimulus easily.
Splinters are also not smooth around the edges, so the cut they cause will be serrated rather than a neat clean cut.
Also they are so small the healing process doesn’t happen as fast as it normally would when a bigger cut activates a faster healing process around the cut area.
Well, if it’s a clean cut then there’s nothing left in it. The cut has happened and the healing process can start and finish.
With a splinter you then have a foreign body in you. This foreign body was sharp enough to penetrate your skin. So putting any pressure on it can cause the splinter to start poking around at the flesh inside of you and that will cause pain.
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