Hello, I would like to know if there is any real definitive scientific way to measure ones tolerance for pain on some sor tof scale. The closest I have been able to find is reference to putting your arm in a tub of cold cold ice water, and seeing how long you can hold it in there, 30 seconds or so meaning you have a high tolerance. I am looking for something a little more scientific than this, does anyone know how this can be measured.
Search Google for gate control theory.
hmm this is a little more about stopping pain more than measuring it on some scale, and other ideas
Invite subjects to sit in a chair.
Start hitting them in the face with your fist.
Count the number of times they let you do it.
Establish an average.
As a side effect, you will have a measure of their stupidity, as well.
Tris
Science can be fun.
Wow, so I guess since I held my arm in a 55 gallon barrel of ice water, slush, and soda cans for a minute-point-five on a bet from the boss-man, that means I have a high pain tolerance? I just assumed it meant I’d do anything to show off.
Took my damn arm three or four hours to regain the correct core temp, too. The surface felt normal, but if you squeezed the flesh you could tell the core temp was still WAY down.
God I’m an idiot.
–Tim
Pain is a perception. Pain models are used in medical research to study the effect of analgesics. They usually emply electrical, thermal, mechanical, or chemical nociceptive stimuli, and when used in animal tests they evaluate behavioral responses to the stimulus (e.g. seeing how long a rat will stand on on a hot plate before jumping off…). In human tests, a verbal report is usually evaluated.
The problem with these assessments is that pain is entirely subjective. I know a guy who insists on having his teeth drilled without lidocaine because he finds the injection more painful than the drilling. He even had a root canal done without lidocaine…
Tell a person to put their hand in a box, then put a gom-jabbar to their throat. Then use said box to inflict pain:)
I’ve found different kinds of pain are at least as important a consideration as the “amount” of pain.
For instance, I can handle a lot more cutting pain than I can dentist pain.
— G. Raven
Dr. Patrick Wall, who invented the TENS (trancutaneous nerve stimulator)unit, and a foremost authority on pain, wrote a book recently, titled Pain: the Science of Suffering. If you’re really interested in pain, I suggest that you read it.
Dr. Wall states in the book that studies have been done. He points out, first, that there are three problems with such studies. (1) The experimenter and the subject are certain that the stimulus will not produce any prolonged pain or injry. (2) The subjects can stop the experiment at any time they decide the pain is not tolerable. (3) What is mesured is pain without suffering that can be instantly abolished.
I will not go into details, but Dr. Wall states that the measurement of pain in those circumstances has been carried out in thousands of trials.
In some experiments, a deliberate attempt was made to encourage the subject to go beyond his/her chosen limit. “What! You ask me to stop increasing the stimulus? Most people take much more.” After that, most allow a higher limit. Different cultures and groups also react differently. Inherent in those trials is the concept of a pure sensation of pain liberated from perceptions and meanings. Dr. Wall does not believe in such a sensation, but thinks it is an artifice generated in part by our dualistic culture and confined by the experimental design n which the subject has agreed to.
The results of the studies show that the onset of pain is the same between groups. The problem starts with the upper limit. A group of Harvard students set their upper limit of tolerable stimulus far below a group in Munich. The experimenter also makes a difference. Results differed depending on whether the person was male or femal, a professor or technician, or a fellow student.
Dr. Wall also explains in his book how the nervous system accounts for pain, particularl;y A beta fibers, A delta fibers, and C fibers.