Pain tolerance is the term used to explain the amount of pain that someone can withstand before he or she suffers from an emotional or physical breakdown. Pain tolerance varies from person to person and can also vary depending on the emotional state that someone is in prior to the onset of the painful situation. In general, research indicates that men have a higher level of pain tolerance than women.
Pain tolerance is different than pain threshold. Pain threshold is the term used to describe the level of pain necessary to generate a painful response in an individual. Someone can have a very high pain threshold and a low level of pain tolerance, for example.
Some people mistakenly believe that pain tolerance can be boosted by exposure to pain. The idea makes sense, exposing the body to increasing levels of pain will help it build up immunity to the pain. In real life, however, just the opposite occurs. The body, once exposed to high levels of pain, becomes more sensitive to it. This makes the body’s response to pain more dramatic when exposed to pain in the future.
The risk of developing this extra-sensitive response to pain is the reason that treating pain quickly is a priority with trauma patients. By treating the pain early, the medical staff is better able to keep it under control for the duration of the patient’s recovery period. Medical studies have also suggested that administering pain medication to a patient before they undergo surgery allows the patient’s pain post surgery to be treated with lower levels of pain medication.
Pain and pain tolerance can have a huge effect on how patients respond to treatment. For this reason, the body’s response to pain is studied with great interest by researchers. One interesting piece of information learned through this research is that patients who are undergoing pain tolerate it much better if they have company. Whether the person who is with them during the painful event is a friend or a stranger, just the presence of another human helps reduces the level of pain that they perceive.