HOW MUCH PAIN CAN A BODY TAKE?
Intense Pain from my Work Out Session
[Image Credit; Pixabay Commons]
That was me in the video from my workout session late last night. I have been out of the gym for weeks because of a health scare, I fell sick and my Blood Pressure Reading was so scary so I was placed on bed rest and was told to get plenty sleep time. Now I’m back at the gym trying to regain my full fitness. It is very hard because of these intense sore and pains after work out session due to my long absence from the Gym.
The Pain of childbirth is known to be the highest form of pain in humans, at “57 Dol” reading on a device called Dolorimeter(an instrument used to measure pain threshold and pain tolerance and with units in Dols). 57 Dols is equivalent to twenty (20) bones in one body getting fractured all at one at the same time.
After two sets of 10-reps of my special push-ups, I felt I was close to 57 Dols in my pain threshold. My body feels so hurt and I thought maybe I had reached my limit for the night. But the truth was that I never even got to “20Dols” and I felt so much pain because I was not fully fit and my endurance threshold had dropped over the weeks, so that prompted me to find out how much pain a body could actually take before death comes in.
An average human (especially men) could handle “45Dols” in pain threshold, except on extreme occasions, in the case of severe accidents, that’s when one body could suffer 20 Bone fractures all at once which equals 57Dols.
But this is not a matter of how much pain women go through at childbirth, which hardly happens now with the improvement in C-section (Cesarean Delivery) which many women prefer presently. It is about how much pain the body could take and if pain could actually be measured.
Pain tolerance level varies per body and pain in its actual self will not kill or might not necessarily result into death because there are some people e.g monks and extreme humans who have trained their bodies, mind, and soul to be able to withstand a great deal of pain. Nevertheless, it is cogent that something is wrong or going wrong in the body when pain is felt which need urgent or as the case may be not so urgent actions otherwise such pain might eventually result in death.
Neuroscientist for a long time only measure pains through a pain scale which involves self-reports by patients, that is; by observing the behavior of a subject through questionnaires and then rate the subjects pain on a scale of 1 to 10.
This method affects clinical decisions because of the inaccurate date. For example, patients could overstate their degree of pain through screaming even though the pain is not so much and might give a 9 when asked what level of pain they are between 1- to. Another example is that a particular subject/victim might be too overwhelmed to understate their pain level. In these two scenarios, any data acquired might not be accurate to make some research and medical verdict which renders this kind of pain measurement through pain scale too orthodoxical.
A MORE REASONBLE AND ACCURATE WAY TO KNOW YOUR PAIN LEVEL
An objective way to measure pain in the human body has been an elusive one for long, but thanks to advancement in technology, researchers have found a more accurate way through neurologic signatures (heat patterns or waves) in a patients/victim brain scan. This approach gives room for higher accuracy in predicting how much pain a particular person under observation feels.
“Understanding the different contributions of different systems to chronic pain and other forms of suffering is an important step towards understanding and alleviating human suffering”- Tor Wager, Lead Study author and Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at University of Colorado, Boulder.Source
Though there is yet no hundred percent (100%) perfect “pain-o-meter” to accurately state the kind of pain an individual goes through, a team of researchers led by Tor Wager made use of analysis from computer that had recorded patterns in 114 subjects (patients) brain scans who had been exposed to heat ranges of extremely and painfully hot to mildly warm.
Surprisingly, a pattern emerged that was constant in all the subjects under test. The group of Scientists conducting this research then assume that the pain patterns would be varied for separate subjects. However, since it was a regular and universal pattern, they accurately projected the volume of heat pain each of the patients was feeling without prior brain scans of individuals used to carry out this test.
“I think there are many ways to extend this study, and we're looking to test the patterns that we've developed for predicting pain across different conditions. The predictive signature heat is different if a particular body experience pressure pain or mechanical pain, or pain on different parts of the body”- Professor Tor WagerSource
To some people, measuring pains in their body could be as inaccurate as it could ever be based on their compounding fears and ignorance plus uncertainty of their discomfort and what actually Is going on in their internal parts at that moment when they are to be tested, hence the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) heat scan the researching scientist used in conducting their tests is an ideal way of identifying objective measurement of pain in a body.
A body as stated earlier might not die from pain, but an individual could enter into shock or coma which eventually might lead to death. When I fractured my right leg while playing football on the pitch years ago, immediately I felt the excruciating pain at my ankle and looked down seeing my leg turning backward, I passed out!
This similar shock takes place in anyone with pains but at different degrees, so to accurately measure pain fear is another factor to take note of. Upon seeing my leg through Xray photo and the Doctor told me I had one compound fracture and two dislocations, although I didn’t faint this time, I became so ill for the next couple of days thanks to fear.
Human body could take pains and shocks, if a woman could go through the pain of childbirth which has been proven to be equivalent of twenty bone been broken then anyone could survive pains from Trigeminal Neuralgia, Kidney Stones, excruciating Tooth abscess, gout, a stone fish sting or a mantra Ray sting, a horrific Achilles tendon tear too is painful but not up to “57 Dols” or getting shot in the upper leg and the hot bullet rip through the femoral artery, that a hell of pains, all these are extremely painful but it won't kill you.
A healthy body must feel pain, it means the Central nervous system is fully functional it allows response to stimulus through pains at times, it is also a good sign that pains could be quantified accurately soonest with clinical measures thanks to the groundbreaking research conducted by Neuroscientist from University of Colorado Boulder, New York University, John Hopkins University and the University of Michigan, a team led by Associate Professor Tor Wager.
REFERENCES
- Scientists Objectively Measure Pain for the First Time Using Brain Scans
- 25 Worst Pains Humans Can Experience
- The Human Body Handles 45 Dels (Units) Of Pain?
- An fMRI-Based Neurologic Signature of Physical Pain
- Scientists Succeed In Objectively Measuring Pain
- How much pain can the body tolerate before death or shock occurs?
- Dolorimeter
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