Taamar wrote:
I suspect (though I admit that I have absolutely no evidence except my own experience) that the more often a person experiences pain the more acclimated they become to it and the more easily they tolerate it. I also suspect that people who have experienced extreme pain aren't bothered so much by minor pain.
That seems to be the implication. People
can become acclimated pain, at least under some circumstances. But it's a curious phenomenon -- in other cases, especially with chronic back pain, the tendency seems to be reversed (i.e. it gets worse over time, for no easily explainable reason).
I'm curious if pain tolerance can be localized or specialized, as well. For instance, I have no idea whether my mother has greater pain tolerance/threshold than I do in general, but when it comes to handling heat, she certainly does. She attributes this to years of cooking and handling hot pans, etc. I can't say whether she's right about the reasons or not, but she can absolutely grab hold of things that other people would jerk their hand away from after just a second or two.
Does that square with your experiences, Taamar?
Incidentally, if you want to compare your pain tolerance and threshold to someone else, a common measurement is the
cold pressor test.
For a valid comparison, what you want to do is have both participants immerse their hands in warm water of a known temperature (say, 100F) for several minutes to equalize any differences in their hand temperature. Each participant should then immerse their hand into an ice water bath. Record the time at which they first start to feel pain sensation. This indicates their pain threshold. They should then keep their hand submerged for as long as they possibly can. This time,
minus the pain threshold time, indicates their pain tolerance.