In the battle of the sexes we are fiercely divided, who has a worse when it
comes to pain?
On the one hand women are left with the task of fitting a watermelon sized
object through a coin sized hole. On the other hand, males protest that even the
slightest nick of their family jewels can leave them incapacitated.
So which hurts more, childbirth or getting kicked in the balls?
Before we begin there is a rumor that is circulating the internet claiming that
the human body can take up to 45 del units of pain and yet a mother feels
up to 57 del of pain during childbirth,
which is apparently equivalent to 20 bones being fractured at once.
The claim then goes on to suggest that being kicked in the balls brings more
than 9000 del of pain. Now apart from the absurd logic that both of
these events can surpass the alleged human limit it, actually uses a unit of
pain, the del, which doesn't even exist. There is a unit of pain once devised
called the dol, from the latin word for pain "dolor" but we will discuss this later.
To really evaluate this question we first need to understand what pain is,
which isn't an easy task.
There is actually a group of specialized nerve cells in your body called nociceptors
that react to pain.
Unlike other nerves which readily fire in response to normal touch or temperature,
nociceptors will only fire once a certain pain threshold has been passed. Some of
these nociceptors respond quickly sending signals to the spinal cord and brain
which produce sharp and sudden pain, allowing you to react quickly
while others transmit more slowly and are responsible for the prolonged dull
ache you feel. For males, testicles are internal organs that have migrated out
of the body cavity which we explain in a previous video you can check out here.
And well some internal organs such as the liver feel no pain, others like the
testicles are covered with many nociceptors making them extremely sensitive.
Afterall their well-being is of the utmost importance.
Furthermore the testicles are attached to many nerves in the stomach as well as
the vagus is nerve which is directly connected to the brains vomit center,
and this is why when hit the pain spreads throughout the abdomen.
The fact that testicles have minimal protection only strengthens the
accompanying symptoms of nausea, increased blood pressure, heart rate and sweating.
But not so fast gentlemen, even though childbirth may not be facing a direct
blow to any internal organs, the mechanical distension of the uterine
area also triggers nociceptors and causes the same kind of visceral pain.
Also consider that throughout evolution female human hips have become smaller
while babies heads have become larger. And not to mention labor lasts
8 hours on average with a mixture of nausea, fatigue and pain.
On top of it all, tension and stretching of muscle and tissue increase as labour
intensifies creating sharp and localized pain.
Okay, so both obviously hurt and have a lot of mechanical stimulation sending
signals to the pain centers of the brain.
But this is where it gets tricky, because the pain isn't simply a physical
response but rather a partially perceptive or subjective experience.
This means that every single individual perceives pain in a slightly different
way. And not only between individuals but depending on your mood, alertness or even
previous experience pain may affect you differently.
It's for this reason that so many attempts to objectively measure pain have
failed including the dol system which we mentioned earlier.
Interestingly nearly 80% of upper limb amputees experience a
phenomenon known as "phantom limb pain".
That is they feel pain in a limb that is no longer there. And while little is
understood about the mechanism for the pain, it is clear that there is no
particular input to trigger the response and yet they still feel a very real
pain.
As such pain is not a stimulus it is an experience that is different for
everybody. Suffice to say both instances of childbirth and getting hit in the
balls can hurt alot.
So we call this one at tie, apart from the fact that the experiences are
completely different and there is so many variables to consider.
In some instances a man could experience more pain than his female
counterpart and vice versa. The main difference being one results in a newborn
baby, while the other potentially results in a decreased the chance of
having one.
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