Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Women bleed for a week without dying. That's why we think they handle pain better.

Is this in the latest issue of DUH! magazine?

The same studies that said women have a higher threshold also stated that once a mans adrenaline kicks in that his pain threshold jumps dramatically above a females pain tolerance. And it kicks in a lot, I remember slicing my thumb open with a wood carving tool to the bone, severing veins and nerves. I originally just wanted a band aid until the step kid saw the blood spurting out and yelled for his mom to take me to the ER. The pain wasn't that bad, if it was for the bleeding I would have just bandaged it and had a beer, but after the adrenaline wore off later I really needed the pain pills the hospital gave me.

"We may have to adjust our thinking about how men and women report their pain. The killer question is: Do women actually feel more pain than men?" said Dr. Atul Butte, lead author of the study, which was published in the Journal of Pain. "That may be more philosophy than anything - how can we tell that for sure?"

Dr. Atul Butte, meet Dr. Jon Levine:

"If I lined up 10 men and 10 women and I took a hammer and broke their legs exactly the same, the 10 women would report more pain than men. And maybe that's just the way women use the pain rating scale, but even knowing that is important," said Dr. Jon Levine, a UCSF rheumatologist who studies the causes and mechanisms of pain.

We've got a falsifiable hypothesis here, gentlemen. Get cracking.

Obvious?

A ton of research has already been done on this topic. Women biatch and moan about every little thing, while men drink it off. It's science.

Maybe women just have better memories. If I get my arm cut off and you ask me how much it hurts, I will probably say 10. If you wait until I am fixed up and then ask how much it had hurt I would probably say 5. I tend to forget how much stuff hurt once I am no longer actively feeling it.

Do you really need another study to tell you that women are liars, manipulators, and drama queens?

Honest Bender: Do you really need another study to tell you that women are liars, manipulators, and drama queens?

Bitter?

/"No, just smacked her on the ass, but she's pissed off anyways."

Huck Chaser: After r-ing tfa, it could just be that women are more honest in their self-reporting of pain, since men want to avoid sounding like wimps.

Which still implies that men have a higher threshold of pain, since they are more willing/able to grin and bear it. That's sort of the point of the "pain threshold": how much physical pain can you actually be put in before you colapse into a quivering mound.

jonny_q: Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Why would it be? Pain threshold isn't an objective measure of pain in international pain units. It's a subjective self-reported arbitrary number on a scale of 1-10. If you report being in more pain, you have a lower threshold.

I dunno, my dad and brothers tend to be big babies when it comes to pain or sickness, while my mom and I are more...shall we say, stoic?

My dad sprained his ankle a few months ago and hasn't stopped complaining about it. I broke my leg last summer and I was walking on it within a week. Granted, my doctor and I didn't know it was broken at the time (hairline fracture didn't show up in initial x-ray), but he told me to not treat it gingerly, thinking I had sprained my knee. I sucked it up and weaned myself off the crutches I was using.

Headline: "New study debunks popular myth that women have higher threshold for pain"
Article: "Of course, the fact that women report more pain overall doesn't necessarily mean they have more or less tolerance to pain than men."

Bad Subby.

I read somewhere once that women do feel less pain when they're nearing the end of a pregnancy, for obvious reasons, but that it's otherwise comparable. I don't really know, though. When I sliced my hand on a piece of glass, I was considerably more concerned about the blood on my lucky bamboo than the pain. In fact, I really don't remember much pain. On the other hand, when my dog digs his claws into my leg or my cat digs hers into anything, I feel that.

/maybe I'm just weird

GameSprocket: Honest Bender: Do you really need another study to tell you that women are liars, manipulators, and drama queens?

Bitter?

/"No, just smacked her on the ass, but she's pissed off anyways."

It's not really coming from bitterness. It's just the way it is.

UDel_Kitty: I dunno, my dad and brothers tend to be big babies when it comes to pain or sickness, while my mom and I are more...shall we say, stoic?

My dad sprained his ankle a few months ago and hasn't stopped complaining about it. I broke my leg last summer and I was walking on it within a week. Granted, my doctor and I didn't know it was broken at the time (hairline fracture didn't show up in initial x-ray), but he told me to not treat it gingerly, thinking I had sprained my knee. I sucked it up and weaned myself off the crutches I was using.

Sprains usually hurt worse for longer because they take longer to heal than broken bones, but then how could you know that, you're a girl.........

/jk

I did have a double compound fracture of my arm that hurt less than both my ankles being sprained, once the arm healed that was it, every time my ankle slightly twists I can feel it again.

jonny_q: Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Get a two basins with really hot or really cold water. Get a man and and a woman to place a hand in said basin and see who can hold out longest. Repeat for 500 men and 500 women. Average times and get an indication for pain threshold.

Why women might report more pain:

Men get more experience with pain (hitting a thumb with a hammer, falling from trees, doing stupid stuff with a bike) than women on average. Therefore men get to compare the pain to worse/less worse pains and come out on the rather painless side. Also adrenaline.

steamingpile: Sprains usually hurt worse for longer because they take longer to heal than broken bones, but then how could you know that, you're a girl.........

Heh, I've sprained both ankles as well, and know what that feels like. He's still being a baby.

DerAppie: jonny_q: Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Get a two basins with really hot or really cold water. Get a man and and a woman to place a hand in said basin and see who can hold out longest. Repeat for 500 men and 500 women. Average times and get an indication for pain threshold.

Why women might report more pain:

Men get more experience with pain (hitting a thumb with a hammer, falling from trees, doing stupid stuff with a bike) than women on average. Therefore men get to compare the pain to worse/less worse pains and come out on the rather painless side. Also adrenaline.

They did this on mythbusters and, on average, the women held out longer than the men.

Where you rate pain on a scale has zero to do with how well or long you can tolerate said pain.

Honest Bender: It's not really coming from bitterness. It's just the way it is.

And men are whiners who like to blame women for everything. That's just the way it is.

/I do my research on Fark.

Stupid obvious research tri-fecta in play. New study: "Why men give their spouse/gf's longer back rubs than women give their spouse/bf's."

Makes you beg to differ.

DerAppie: jonny_q: Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Get a two basins with really hot or really cold water. Get a man and and a woman to place a hand in said basin and see who can hold out longest. Repeat for 500 men and 500 women. Average times and get an indication for pain threshold.

That tests for self-reporting. That doesn't test pain threshold. There are many reasons why someone would either enhance or diminish a self-report.

Actually testing pain threshold would require stimulating a determined amount of pain receptors and measuring an involuntary reaction. Say, touching a piece of hot metal to the back of someone's hand and seeing whether they jerk away. You could increase the temperature of the metal by one degree at a time to get a threshold.
Even then, it would be slightly attenuated by degree of thermal conductivity, which would be related to subdermal fat amounts, etc.

Why women might report more pain:

Men get more experience with pain (hitting a thumb with a hammer, falling from trees, doing stupid stuff with a bike) than women on average. Therefore men get to compare the pain to worse/less worse pains and come out on the rather painless side. Also adrenaline.

Why, Mr. Lamarck... I thought you were long dead!

jonny_q: Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Theoretically it is, but in the future. There is a neurotransmitter called Substance P that transmits the signal for pain. If we had a way to measure the release of Substance P in an ethical way during the experiencing of painful stimuli, we could have a more empirically direct measure. But for now, though, we're left to empirically indirect measures (physiological responses - reflexive withdrawal, galvonic skin response, etc.) and subjective assessments.

Some men are better than others at handling pain.

I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

Perception of pain and ability to function while experiencing it are two different things. That's why the whole idea of "tolerating" pain is difficult to evaluate scientifically.

This whole thing started with a poorly performed study and a lot of pseudo-scientific presumptions. "Well women give birth, and that sure looks like it hurts like hell, so they must have some kind of special pain-tolerance or something". Add a crappy "study" and you have the makings of a pretty strong myth.

Plus what man is dumb enough to get in a fight over THIS with his wife/girlfriend? It just ends up with a slap in the face and a "tolerate THIS on the couch tonight, arsehole!".

Yeah, we know. We still can't actually do anything about it though, they have breasts and we will just say 'Yes dear' like always.

Theaetetus: MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

[imgs.xkcd.com image 640x187]

Yeah, my scale has been all sorts of screwed up since I got a green fracture of my right hip and I was verbally abused by a coach to run on it since I hadn't gotten a doctors note. My right leg is longer than my left because of shiat like that.

/Calmly walked into the ER with an 8 inch gash in my knee.
//Didn't hurt until the doctor injected fluid into my kneecap to check for cuts to some capsule.

MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

There's an XKCD for that:

Theaetetus: MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

[imgs.xkcd.com image 640x187]

Note to self: hit refresh before submitting anything to see if it's been done...

I still get in disagreements about this one.

Childbirth aside, because of course it hurts, but there are also hormone releases to make it manageable (otherwise the species would have died out), I still say men can handle more pain. I don't trust the Mythbusters claim on this one because Adam and Grant were involved--they cry looking at pictures of people in pain.

In different incidents I have cut to the bone, broken, broken, and broken my hands--every time genuinely surprised the damage was as bad as the doctor said. None of the situations hurt that much.

My wife sprains her thumb and I have to hear about it like she jammed it in a blender.

You have to show people what a 1 is, what a 5 is, and what a 10 is, in order to calibrate. Having been in the hospital once, I really didn't know where the upper bound was to be able to say.

They say 10 is "unbearable" or "intolerable", but there's a very wide range of pain above my "unbearable" level. A 5 hour headache becomes unbearable, dropping a bowling ball on my toe was bearable but hurt like the dickens.

Also, they guy who wants to break legs with a hammer scares me.

If you're going to quantify pain then certain benchmarks to differentiate the levels would be nice. Level 1 could be Prince, 5 maybe Bieber, 10 Yoko, something like that.

MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

During my last kidney stone episode, I had to give it a 9.5. I told the ER doc that it was my assumption that at 10, I'd lose consciousness.

During an earlier episode, in less pain, I asked the doc if the scale was linear or logarithmic, and, if it was a log scale, was it common log or natural log. Take-home lesson #1: some docs don't like to be made to feel ignorant. Take home-lesson #2: don't piss off the keeper of the meds....

Kome: MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

There's an XKCD for that:
[imgs.xkcd.com image 640x187]

Tell me about it. I came here to post the gom jabbar, but lo and behold!

They feel pain more intensely and yet they insist on wearing shoes that were not designed for anything remotely resembling a human foot.

Women are strange creatures.

Xenu's Giant Pink Replicock: You have to show people what a 1 is, what a 5 is, and what a 10 is, in order to calibrate. Having been in the hospital once, I really didn't know where the upper bound was to be able to say.

They say 10 is "unbearable" or "intolerable", but there's a very wide range of pain above my "unbearable" level. A 5 hour headache becomes unbearable, dropping a bowling ball on my toe was bearable but hurt like the dickens.

Yeah, it depends quite a bit on a person's lifetime experience with chronic pain. I've had migraines that have lasted for weeks (no joke); but I know from experience that I can survive/"tolerate" it. That doesn't mean they don't hurt like hell, or that I don't need serious doses of pain meds to get through them.

Doctor: "Rate your head pain from 1 to 10."
Me: "This one's about a 5."
What the doctor thinks I mean: "A couple Excedrin should do the trick."
What I actually mean: "This migraine is only half as head-exploding as the last one, but I still need serious pain relief."

Also, they guy who wants to break legs with a hammer scares me.

Also this.

Feepit: Kome: MoparPower: I just don't get the 1-10 scale.How the hell am I suppose to know what ten is? I can't move, but I imagine having acid poured on my balls would be worse?

There's an XKCD for that:
[imgs.xkcd.com image 640x187]

Tell me about it. I came here to post the gom jabbar, but lo and behold!

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Snakeophelia: Oh, and I've participated in pain perception studies, where electronic gizmos were held against my skin at various points, and I was asked to rate the perceived pain. This was, I assumed, correlated with the amount of voltage coursing through the device. I was doing this as a favor for a fellow student, but this is when I discovered that some parts of my body are "dead" skin - I couldn't feel any electric charge, or presumably pain. The parts on my leg are probably due to nerve damage following abdominal surgery, but there's a spot running along the inside of both arms where I feel almost nothing, and I have no idea why.

Not saying you don't have those "dead" skin areas, but did your fellow student actually shock those parts of your skin or were there some non-shock trials to test whether your anticipation of pain and/or association with signals of an electrical shock (e.g. sounds that typically accompany being shocked) would induce the experience of pain?

After my hip replacement surgery, I now have a whole new vocabulary for pain, stuff that used to bother me no longer does now that I know what it is to be in constant pain for a month with no relief.

Xenu's Giant Pink Replicock: Also, they guy who wants to break legs with a hammer scares me.

"Hi, I'm pediatrician."

"Hi, I'm an obstetrician."

"Hi, I'm a neurosurgeon."

"Hi, I'm a doctor... a doctor of PAIN!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!"

Theaetetus: DerAppie: jonny_q: Isn't that philosophically not provable?

Get a two basins with really hot or really cold water. Get a man and and a woman to place a hand in said basin and see who can hold out longest. Repeat for 500 men and 500 women. Average times and get an indication for pain threshold.

That tests for self-reporting. That doesn't test pain threshold. There are many reasons why someone would either enhance or diminish a self-report.

Actually testing pain threshold would require stimulating a determined amount of pain receptors and measuring an involuntary reaction. Say, touching a piece of hot metal to the back of someone's hand and seeing whether they jerk away. You could increase the temperature of the metal by one degree at a time to get a threshold.
Even then, it would be slightly attenuated by degree of thermal conductivity, which would be related to subdermal fat amounts, etc.

Would, by that definition, someone who was lightly stung by a needle and moves his/her hand have a very low pain threshold because there was an involuntary reaction? The involuntary reaction will always be to move away from a potentially damaging situation as fast as possible. If you want to know how well someone can withstand pain you need to check how long someone can repress that instinctual response. While you aren't exactly wrong, measuring at which point the body decides something to be damaging (involuntary response) is a part of the pain threshold, the more useful measurement (according to me) is how long can override the pain sensation. Everyone who tries to walk on a broken leg will flinch at first, or even all the time (involuntary response), but the person who keeps walking, while flinching with every step, despite the pain has a higher pain threshold than a person who doesn't flinch at the second step but decides that the pain is too much to keep going. Where you look at a similar amount of pain receptors needing to be involved (which might be different per square centimeter between 2 persons), I prefer to look at similar situations.

Another example: women have 34 nerve fibers per square centimeter of facial skin and men only 17. Now imagine a tennis ball hitting a man's face and a woman's face at the same speed. the man rates the pain a 5 and the woman a 6, does this mean that the woman's pain threshold is higher because she had twice the number of stimulated nerves or is it lower because the man reported less pain in a similar situation?

Why women might report more pain:

Men get more experience with pain (hitting a thumb with a hammer, falling from trees, doing stupid stuff with a bike) than women on average. Therefore men get to compare the pain to worse/less worse pains and come out on the rather painless side. Also adrenaline.

Why, Mr. Lamarck... I thought you were long dead!

Why invoke Lamarck? I never claimed a child feels less pain if his father fell out of a tree at some point before conceiving a child (although there might be some connection between risk taking behavior which attracts women and pain threshold. If the activity is dangerous enough, there might be some selection against men with low pain thresholds). Imagine a boy growing up in a completely child proofed house, no sharp corners, no hard surfaces to fall on and foam around all objects to prevent the stubbing of toes. Now imagine another boy, this one grew up climbing trees, building tree houses, lighting small fires etc. Which child do you think would report the highest pain score after hitting himself on the thumb with a hammer? The child from the completely childproofed house who never hurt himself or the boy who probably go hurt on multiple occasions while growing up (such as hitting his thumb while building the tree house, falling out of trees, falling on/against a hard surface when learning to walk or small burns while setting stuff on fire)? Experience with pain teaches you how to handle it.

Eh, we men are conditioned to just... take it like a man. That's a pretty significant reason we'll never have an accurate comparison.

cyberspacedout: Eh, we men are conditioned to just... take it like a man. That's a pretty significant reason we'll never have an accurate comparison.

Also, are we talking about how much pain a man self reports when a female doctor asks him, when a computerized form asks him, or when his dad or a sports authority figure asks him?