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Asked by lisaloo to Claire, Matt, Rob, Sam on 26 Jun 2013.
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Sam Geen answered on 26 Jun 2013:
Pain is caused by nerve endings in your skin and sometimes inside your body. It happens when your body sense something that is damaging it – heat, for example, or being cut. There are reflexes that can quickly, for example, move your hand away from a hot object that’s burning you.
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 26 Jun 2013:
Pain is a really important reflex – it teaches us what not to do, and this helps us make good choices and helps us survive. Putting your hand in a fire is not a good idea – the pain we feel when something is too hot is telling us to re-think whatever idea had gotten us into that situation. So that’s the general cause of pain – no pain, no lessons on survival (no pain no gain!). More specifically pain is nerve endings being activated, and sending urgent messages to our brain.
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Claire Lee answered on 26 Jun 2013:
Pain is a particular type of nerve sending a signal to your brain that something is causing harm to your body. Your brain then sends a signal back to the part of your body that it got the signal from saying “move away quickly!”
You have different types of nerve endings that are sensitive to different things – pain, heat, soft touch, pressure, vibration, etc. You have different amounts of them in different places too – like more of the more sensitive ones on your fingers. They all have different thresholds – for example, the pain one will not fire for soft touch or low heat, only when it gets above a certain level, which I guess can be different for different people (giving some people a higher pain threshold)
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