Throughout hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and natural selection, the human body has refined various ways to avoid dangerous situations.
One of them is something as basic as the development of pain receptors or nociceptors, which are distributed throughout many areas of our body, especially near our skin, which is the area where avoidable threats most frequently appear.
Of course, looking at everything from a certain perspective, Pain, more than a useful tool, can be an ordeal. literally. There are many situations that produce so much pain that for a certain time they completely invade all the emotional and cognitive processes that are taking place in our mind and cause all of our attention to shift towards intense suffering, without us being able to avoid it.
Next you can see the 8 great representatives of those situations in which pain is taken to the limit
1. Trigeminal neuralgia
An alteration of the nervous system that affects the trigeminal ganglion, which communicates with one of the large brain nerves That is why when it appears, the pain spreads to areas of the head: the scalp, lips, eyes and nose.
2. Kidney stones (nephritic colic)
Pieces of petrified minerals slowly crawling through small urinary ducts and tearing apart parts of tissue in its path. Not only does the injured part hurt, but all the adjacent areas become inflamed. Anyone who has suffered it knows that it is one of the most unbearable pains.
Bones are the basic structure of our body, and therefore a relatively simple injury to them can have catastrophic consequences for our chances of survival.
Or at least this is what happened until thousands of years ago, when there were no ways to splint a broken bone part of the body and such an injury easily led to death. Nowadays you can easily survive such an injury, but our body has not yet adapted to this new reality and that is why the pain receptors in the bones and adjacent areas continue to torment us when we have such an accident.
3. Migraines
A migraine is not a simple headache, it is a layer of intense pain and “pricks” or “cramps” which takes over a large portion of the head. Furthermore, migraines do not allow us to think or see clearly, which is why the discomfort multiplies when we see how such basic aspects of our identity and our mental abilities are temporarily limited. It is this set of discomforts that transforms a migraine into something painful.
4. Endodontics
The mouth is an area of the body full of sensory cells of all kinds. And, of course, pain receptors are also very present in both the tongue and gums.
That’s why pulling out or drilling molars, especially if they are large and wide-based (like wisdom teeth), can be an ordeal if anesthesia is not used well. Fortunately, with anesthesia it is a very uncomfortable but bearable experience. We have to thank medicine that we can undergo surgery without going through a real ordeal.
In a similar way to what happens with renal colic, gallstones, which are Objects similar to small stones are dragged through the bile ducts, there are cases in which they are so large that they completely obstruct these ducts. A very painful and exhausting experience.
6. Herniated disc
When a part of the chains of neurons that travel along the spinal column are pinched by a vertebra slightly out of its proper place, a herniated disc appears. As Lesions directly affect the neuronal fibers that quickly carry information to the brain, the pain is very intense and sharp. To make matters worse, these are injuries that can continue for weeks or even months.
7. Burn
A burn is an injury in one region over a large area of the skin in which all the pain receptors have been activated practically at the same time. Furthermore, as it can leave the skin damaged forever, poor healing can leave very painful consequences.
The following images may offend your sensitivity.
8. Lesions or microlesions in the testicles
This is one of the most intense forms of pain that can appear after minor accidents. A slight blow to this area of the male anatomy is capable of knocking you out of combat any man for more than a minute, although the pain usually appears a few seconds late.
