Women are bigger wimps than men?
Despite male machismo, conventional wisdom has long held that women handle pain better than men. This notion stems, of course, from women giving birth. However, new research in the UK suggests that the reverse is, in fact, true.
The study shows that women tend to focus more on the emotional aspects of pain rather than the physicality of it. Any guy will tell you that this isn’t terribly surprising: “women are more emotional than men” is the traditional mantra. Even my mom will tell me that she’s having trouble thinking logically when she’s under duress because she’s “a woman.” Anyway, I digress…
The study was conducted with 50 men and women using ice water as a trigger:
Volunteers were asked to put their arm in a warm water bath for two minutes before plunging the same arm into a vat of icy water for a further two minutes or until they could stand the pain no longer.
The women felt pain much sooner than the men and were able to endure it for far less time.
Well basically, this proves nothing. There are many kinds of pain stemming from the types of nociceptors involved in the painful sensation. Basically, there are three types of nociceptors (pain receptors) that all respond to different types of painful stimulation. Those three basic categories are heat and cold, mechanical deformation, and chemical stimulation.
Still keeping it basic, there are a few different kinds of pain as well. Slow pain, fast pain, etc. Slow pain travels along non-myelinated neurons, and is generally “worse” than fast pain, which moves along myelinated axons many orders of magnitude faster than slow pain. It is the deep, throbbing, slow pain that most people have a very difficult time dealing with, and it’s this kind of pain I would like to see studied. It is also this kind of pain that is present in traumatic events like childbirth.
Somehow I can’t see many men volunteering to have their innards stretched to simulate childbirth, so I think the question of who the bigger wimps remains unsolved, with a slight edge in womenkind’s favor. ;) I would also like to see this study replicated with larger sample size to see if the same results hold true.
But apart from declaring the study a bust, there were some interesting tidbits more worthy of discussion than the obvious “findings.” Namely, the mechanisms that the sexes use for dealing with the pain that is present.
Lead researcher Dr Ed Keogh, a psychologist at the Pain Management Unit at the university, said: “Our research has shown that whilst the sensory-focused strategies used by men helped increase their pain threshold and tolerance of pain, it was unlikely to have any benefit for women.
“Women who concentrate on the emotional aspects of their pain may actually experience more pain as a result, possibly because the emotions associated with pain are negative.”
This last statement opens up a Pandora’s box for discussion about the difference between the sexes, which the article touches on briefly, but more importantly, the ramifications for pain management in general: virtual reality for burn victims being probably the most prominent example.
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[...] In the case of video games, there are more effective ways of killing pain without pain killers in extreme circumstances, as I outlined here a few weeks ago, particularly in the case of burn victims. But as someone who compulsively picked at his scalp as a child, I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t have done it if I had a computer game to occupy my hands most of the time. [...]
Pingback by polyscience.org » Bullets: Stress, Computer games, IQ, &c… — July 20, 2005 @ 9:27 am
[Somehow I can’t see many men volunteering to have their innards stretched to simulate childbirth]
Considering that the female body has appropriate organs and other physiology to support birthing a child and the male body does not have any such physiology, stretching the innards of a male isn’t anything but torture and would not, in any way, simulate child birth so even that “test” would yield no usable results.
Comment by fitten — August 3, 2005 @ 11:42 am
[...] I’ve mentioned virtual reality technology in the past, specifically how it can be used to aid those undergoing skin grafts (last paragraph). Virtual reality is back in the news, this time how it can help those dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from battlefield situations. [...]
Pingback by polyscience.org » Virtual reality offers hope for veterans — August 23, 2005 @ 10:47 am