Why the sexes don’t feel pain the same way

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
Robert Sorge was studying pain in mice in 2009, but he was the one who ended up with a headache.

At McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Sorge was investigating how animals develop an extreme sensitivity to touch. To test for this response, Sorge poked the paws of mice using fine hairs, ones that wouldn’t ordinarily bother them. The males behaved as the scientific literature said they would: they yanked their paws back from even the finest of threads.

But females remained stoic to Sorge’s gentle pokes and prods1. “It just didn’t work in the females,” recalls Sorge, now a behaviourist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “We couldn’t figure out why.” Sorge and his adviser at McGill University, pain researcher Jeffrey Mogil, would go on to determine that this kind of pain hypersensitivity results from remarkably different pathways in male and female mice, with distinct immune-cell types contributing to discomfort2.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00895-3
 
Sorge and his adviser at McGill University, pain researcher Jeffrey Mogil, would go on to determine that this kind of pain hypersensitivity results from remarkably different pathways in male and female mice, with distinct immune-cell types contributing to discomfort2.
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surely not?! surely it's that male mice are more prone to "conversion" and allowing their emotional distress to manifest bodily, and also obviously because they are much more prone to pain catastrophising, & therefore become centrally sensitised, leading to body watching & misinterpreting normal sensation & the production of a vicious cycle of avoidance etc etc etc,

- Which they cannot overcome because of the 'secondary gain' from all the attention from humans prodding them & hurting them & otherwise making their lives miserable (which they must obviously subconsciously love because they dont magically stop having a pain reaction when the humans think they ought to). Immune cell types? pah! move along nothing to see here

:emoji_rolling_eyes:



ETA: just in case of any doubt, autistic spectrum difficulties / language translation issues.... that was sarcasm
 
Scottish Woman, 71, Doesn't Experience Pain or Anxiety Because of Rare Genetic Mutation

After getting her hip replaced, doctors told Cameron she would need to undergo painful hand surgery, and were shocked when she said she wouldn’t be in need of any painkillers, as she’d never needed to take them before

https://people.com/health/woman-feels-no-pain-anxiety-genetic-mutation/


How do I get me some of that?

Seriously, I've previously wondered if my body doesn't register pain as much as the average person, mostly based on my multiple experiences with kidney stones, which I would describe as 'discomfort' - on one occasion I was peeing bright red blood for a month or so after every run - until the stones finally worked their way into my bladder - then it would take a few days before I excreted them - I managed to collect one as I felt it coming out, but it wasn't painful, just a sensation.

I grew up on a farm and one time I put one of the tongs of a pitch fork right through my foot but I didn't notice until I tried to pitch the silage. I've had a couple of really bad bike crashes with meaty road rash down one side of my body - and those times I was hit by a car on my bike - broken ribs I didn't know I had - never thought about pain killers because I wasn't in pain - and more objectively, the tattoo artist who commented on my body's lack of reaction.

I like going to the dentist. Wake me when you're done.

ETA: I'm a liar, I just remembered that since ME when my hands get cold, they get painfully cold. But maybe that's a different pain 'pathway'?



 
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ScottTriGuy said:
Scottish Woman, 71, Doesn't Experience Pain or Anxiety Because of Rare Genetic Mutation

After getting her hip replaced, doctors told Cameron she would need to undergo painful hand surgery, and were shocked when she said she wouldn’t be in need of any painkillers, as she’d never needed to take them before

https://people.com/health/woman-feels-no-pain-anxiety-genetic-mutation/


How do I get me some of that?

Seriously, I've previously wondered if my body doesn't register pain as much as the average person, mostly based on my multiple experiences with kidney stones, which I would describe as 'discomfort' - on one occasion I was peeing bright red blood for a month or so after every run - until the stones finally worked their way into my bladder - then it would take a few days before I excreted them - I managed to collect one as I felt it coming out, but it wasn't painful, just a sensation.

I grew up on a farm and one time I put one of the tongs of a pitch fork right through my foot but I didn't notice until I tried to pitch the silage. I've had a couple of really bad bike crashes with meaty road rash down one side of my body - and those times I was hit by a car on my bike - broken ribs I didn't know I had - never thought about pain killers because I wasn't in pain - and more objectively, the tattoo artist who commented on my body's lack of reaction.

I like going to the dentist. Wake me when you're done.

ETA: I'm a liar, I just remembered that since ME when my hands get cold, they get painfully cold. But maybe that's a different pain 'pathway'?


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:jawdrop::jawdrop::jawdrop:
 
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