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Best way to increase pain tolerance?

Is a high tolerance to physical pain genetic, a state of mind, a result of a lot of deep and painful emotional experiences, or a way of life?

  • Why? How can I increase my tolerance to physical pain? If it's a state of mind, what ways do I change how I think? If it's a result of a lot of deep and painful emotional experiences, why? How? How is that linked to physical pain? How does that affect your tolerance? If it's a way of life, in what ways should one live his/her life? Or approach his/her life? Somehow, I think physical pain is worst than emotional pain.

  • Answer:

    Any of the above, all of the above, or any combination therein. You do NOT want to increase your tolerance to physical pain. To me physical pain is much easier than emotional pain, but then I have been conditioned to endure physical pain easily. Emotional pain you never seem to build up the same endurance. I have been physically conditioned through repeated and continuous forms of physical pain through most of my life to endure, often wordlessly. This is not a healthy goal. Pain response is a protective instinct similar to fight or flight. If you are continuously given pain, systematically increasing or just continous, you can grow accustomed to it. Severe instances often numb the nervous system for lesser trauma. I never quite felt the same after each stabbing. Again, these are not traumas you want as a goal. To break the pain threshold is much like breaking the fight or flight instinct, both can be circumvented, but then you have someone who can sit and endure the worst physical tortures someone can dream up and still show few signs as to how severe the punishments are getting.

Jeffry Brickley at Quora Visit the source

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It's possibly genetic but probably not hereditary.  Tris said that redheads have a higher threshold for pain but my experience from having very close redheaded friends is that they have a low threshold for pain. It's also a state of mind.  The mind is the most powerful thing you have and controls your emotions and other sensory conditions.  Remember, it's mind over matter.  If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. You can probably even train yourself to withstand pain at higher levels but that would mean that you'd have to consistently and constantly endure the same pain over and over to build up an "immunity" to pain. I myself, have an extremely high threshold for pain.  I was "accused" of not having a broken ankle because I didn't show any signs of real pain (nor did it show up in the x-ray initially because of swelling) when the doctor was going through his prognosis and torquing my ankle and foot in every direction.  The initial diagnosis was that I had only a severe sprain but when I still couldn't walk on my foot after a week, I had the doctor recheck.  Low and behold, I did have a broken ankle and I could easily tell that the doctor wasn't happy that his initial diagnosis was incorrect.  Thankfully I didn't end up with any long term side effects for him misdiagnosing my broken ankle. I also deal with migraine headaches and can have them last for days upon days.  My sister also deals with migraines but they affect her more so than they do me.  I can function and focus at work whereas she has to be on a steady diet of medication to deal with the pain. Understand that I still felt the pain and so will you but how you deal with the pain is the true measure of your pain threshold.

Michael Harper

The myth busters did an episode where they showed that red heads had on average a higher pain tolerance threshold. Their results also showed that mothers had the highest threshold for pain. This would indicate that pain tolerance is affected by both genetics and past experiences. Hope that helps.

Tris Ando

Its a state of mind. Everyone has a different level of tolerance for pain, some people scream at the prick of a needle and others don't even flinch.... Another example would be how some people appreciate certain foods and others don't, we all taste the same thing its just our mind that decides whether we like it or not

Karishma Sawhney

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