Comments on: Why do stubbed toes hurt so damned much?

By: RedShirt77

RedShirt77 — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:37:00 +0000

Worst part is it takes weeks to heal if you bruise a joint or even break a toe.

Bur is it worse than stubbing your face?
http://youtu.be/u33ivAO_Zyk

By: SpaceBeers

SpaceBeers — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:05:00 +0000

Stupid evolution. Not only did it rob us of having awesome tails but now this?!?

By: Greg C.

Greg C. — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 03:51:00 +0000

It’s truly a devastating experience. You’re walking about the house minding your own business, without any shoes on your feet, focusing on what you need to get done, then the inevitable happens. You step too close to a piece of furniture … and {{{{WHAM!!}}}}, you stump your toe. The pain spreads like an explosion in your foot as if you stepped on a landmine or something.

The next thing you know, you’re cursing that peice of furniture and grabbing your foot while you’re on the floor rolling around in pain, or hopping around like a wounded kangaroo on one foot.

It has happened to all of us.

I think stubbing ones toe hurts more than if it was run over by a bus. And what’s even worse, is that the pain gets more intense as time goes on. OUCH!!!!!!!

By: Blanche Beecham

Blanche Beecham — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 02:47:00 +0000

I’ve been tricked into both pregnancy and toe surgery. Of the two, I prefer giving birth naturally, without painkillers to having the entire toenail removed (with painkilers) for an ingrown situation.

This is nature’s way of endorsing shoes and condoms.

By: tobergill

tobergill — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 21:37:00 +0000

As a Vibram Five Fingers user, I am evolutionarily confused. I can attest to the severe pain of regular toe stubbing while running on uneven surfaces, but they banished my knee pain completely. What to do…..

By: kromelizard

kromelizard — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 18:19:00 +0000

There might be something to the notion that there’s a difference in pain response. After all, your hands are within your field of view and well protected by the amount of attention a person typically pays to them. Your toes aren’t.

By: BombBlastLightingWaltz

BombBlastLightingWaltz — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 18:16:00 +0000

“Many’s the time I’ve rolled around on the ground, grimacing and making animal keening noises…”

Also known as Involuntary Tourettes Syndrome (ITS)

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 17:50:00 +0000

So you can enjoy it all the more when you stop.
Seriously, I can’t help thinking that we need both physical and emotional pain and pleasure messages to motivate us creatively (even if the messages are created by different physiological processes/systems).
No pain, no empathy?

By: Atvaark

Atvaark — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 17:39:00 +0000

Why does looking at a picture hurt so much?

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Shhhhh!

The first rule of Placebo club…

That explains why my nephew said just pinching his thigh higher up than the shot worked better.

By: Snig

Snig — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 16:19:00 +0000

There’s no paper, and no scientist (at least no evolutionary biologist). It’s just someone asked a PT professor about it and put it on the web.

By: RedShirt77

RedShirt77 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:43:00 +0000

The question is just as much about, why our feet are so injury prone as why injury hurts so much.

Injuries mean no walking, but avoiding injuries makes it hard to Hunt, or avoid being prey

By: RedShirt77

RedShirt77 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:40:00 +0000

I think this guy is missing the point a bit.

Real answer is that evolution is a work in progress and our feet are sort of filling some needs and failing tragically at others in the same way our back is.

Our ancestors needed hand like feet to hang and run in trees. So the lacked the frost bite resistant hooves or paws that almost all land animals use. Those more evolved for land locomotion are harder to injure, less prone to frost bite and temperature discomfort.

On the other hand all the nerve endings, articulating toes, and flappy long feet make our feet better dor bipedal standing, swimming, and fetish porn.

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:27:00 +0000

I can live with hunger for long periods of time with tolerable distress, so I understand what you’re talking about. I’m good at that and it annoys and preoccupies my wife (she’s right you know).

Meanwhile, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about :-P

By: Shawn H Corey

Shawn H Corey — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:03:00 +0000

And you need a scientist to write a paper about this? The reason why it’s so painful is to make you avoid from doing it again. It’s that simple. People tend to avoid painful situations. Receiving a lot of pain when you stub your toe means you’ll watch where you’re putting your feet. Being careful means less chance of injury and infection.

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 14:28:00 +0000

There are various patches for this, though.

By: tré

tré — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 13:17:00 +0000

I’d also be interested in a patch for that whole “walk in, forget why you came, walk out, remember after two minutes” thing.

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:21:00 +0000

So Chopper Reid’s advice still stands! Yay!

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:02:00 +0000

It shouldn’t, although if you were taking a classically yogic approach, I suppose that you would try to dissociate all emotions from experience.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:14:00 +0000

Does that adversely affect your ability to experience pleasure as positive? Do you just end up indifferent?

By: AllyPally

AllyPally — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 09:14:00 +0000

But the conclusion of the report is the thing doesn’t work. Placebo effect only.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 06:38:00 +0000

I have mildly ingrown toenails. I have a go at them about once a month when they start to get twingey and occasionally there’s a bit of soreness for a day or two. My mother’s big toenails formed 270° of a circle! Eventually she had a radical toenailectomy.

By: Mazoola

Mazoola — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 05:42:00 +0000

Then toss gout into the mix, and all the arguments for the importance of toe sensitivity and tricks to interrupt the signalling of pain go right out the window.

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:39:00 +0000

Things like Lamasil are more effective if used early. Once you’ve started going as serious as having things ripped off, medication may not work as well. I know it’s expensive, mine was subsidised by the Australian Gov because the fungus I was suffering from was on a hit list of problems that were really hard to treat (and more debilitating) the longer they affected someone.

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:36:00 +0000

Thing is, the pain response should have been teaching you to pick up your feet while running for years before you ran into that apex predator.

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:23:00 +0000

Based on the rather dreadful things that happen to people with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, it does seem that humans aren’t really set up for more benign emergency signalling(though, consider the mechanism by which you move a limb to perform a task: even with your eyes closed, or focused elsewhere, you can ‘sense’ the location of the limb and guide it to target. If, instead of ‘hurting’, damage signals were incorporated directly as routing constraints, that might work).

However, that’s because we are a ghastly pile of legacy-feedback-systems-upon-legacy-feedback-systems, which makes for a pretty mediocre user experience. Within the constraints of that mess, pain does cut through the clutter. Unfortunately, the constraints of that mess kind of suck, and are what preclude better solutions.

By: Guido

Guido — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:07:00 +0000

But that’s why adrenalin masks the pain, you don’t feel it as much when you are primed. Afterwards…

By: Randy Walters

Randy Walters — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:56:00 +0000

I remember running down a home hallway when I was about 12, catching my little toe on a piece of moulding and curling up in a ball of utter agony. The memory has never left me.

By: The Rizz

The Rizz — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:11:00 +0000

It should be unpleasant, yes – like some severe discomfort. But cripplingly bad pain, even just for a minute, can get you eaten by that predator you were fleeing from at high speed when your toe hit that rock…

By: blueelm

blueelm — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 02:18:00 +0000

I’ve always been curious about that. Don’t you feel the ingrown nail at first? Or does it just always grow that way? Whenever I’ve gotten one I’ve just cut it out as soon as I notice it, but I’ve never had one that was really bad or anything. So just a mild cut, prying it out and putting something between the pulled-out nail and the toe flesh was enough. Mmmm… sexy talk.