I sometimes wonder about the whole "pain concept." Can women really take pain better then men? Case in point: I can hold a much hotter pot or pan in my bare hands without it scorching my skin than EEE or a number of other ladies in my life. Now, one could argue that I can handle more pain than them from that situation, so why in the world do people always say women can withstand more pain then men? Perhaps there are studies that prove me wrong somehow. Maybe men truly are less sensitive then women (emotionally and physically — har har). If so, how can someone say that women take pain better. How do you even measure the threshold of pain? Perhaps women can deal with truly traumatic pain better because there is some sort of woman pain dealing mechanism, so whereas a man would simply shut down and proceed to die the woman continues to deal, but is that a true measure of how someone can take pain?
Wikipedia has a good article on pain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain
This is an interesting topic. I would start by distinguishing between acute and chronic pain. From the wikipedia article, “Acute pain serves to protect one after an injury. Chronic pain does not serve this or any other purpose. Acute pain is the symptom of pain. Chronic pain is the disease of pain.†In the case of holding a searing hot object you would be experiencing an acute cutaneous pain caused by injury to the skin. With repeated exposure to acute pain, one develops a pain tolerance. For example, if you hold a hot pot for two seconds, then three seconds… N seconds you can gradually build up a pain insensitivity. It could be that men can handle acute pain better than women. Men have thicker skins on there hands and which makes them better able tolerate localized heat/pain. Or, the guys just toughen it out until the other person blinks. Whereas, women can tolerate chronic pain better. An example of chronic pain would be pain associated with cancer. Women sort of absorb chronic pain and find a way of keeping going. Whereas, most guys sort of wither a bit when exposed to chronic pain.
It is said that one of the most painful things that a woman does is childbirth, as the joints of her hips expand to allow the baby to fit through. Women have the ability to deal with this type of acute pain due to natural opiates given off during childbirth. Who handles pain better, I would say that it has to do with whether it is acute or chronic. Guys tolerate acute pain better whereas women handle chronic pain better.
After my last comment, I continued to think about whether women take pain better.
One could look at it from the pharmaceutical perspective. I hope that Alan has some ideas. Let us say you have a man and woman with the same painful chronic condition. Both are suffering from the same condition with identical characteristics. For example, a tumor that is identical. When they each start their treatment regimen the woman will use less pain killers than the man. One could infer from this that because women use less pain killers that they tolerate pain better.
they say that the closest thing to childbirth that a man can go through is passing a kidney stone, and nobody, male or female, handles a passing a stone with a smile on their face.
As for the last example, unfortunately, all that really would suggest to me is that the particular woman in question has a higher pain tolerance, or that the man is not opiate naive, which is a a perfectly normal thing in baltimore.
As to who can tolerate more pain, i think its all subjective. Some days i can handle pain, some days I can’t. Thats not to say that my physical tolerance for pain has changed, but my mental ability to cope with that pain at that time has changed.
I get the mental pain aspect of what Alan is saying there. When I climb a long climb sometimes things will hurt and your muscles burn, and some days you can deal with that mental aspect of working through it a lot better than others. Chris — I’m sure you can relate with the whole running thing. I’ve always admired you for being able to run so far and mentally get through the pain of it all. I guess that’s even kind of like a guy who walks on hot coals or glass. Anyone can do it you just build up your pain tolerance and mental has a lot to do with it.