Pain is an exceeding complex issue. From a purely biological point of view there is absolutely no such thing as differing pain thresholds. Pain Nerves - like all nerves in the body have a threshold at which they fire off or not. For example a pain nerve doesn't turn on a 'little bit' - its either on or off. Now the threshold that a pain nerve fibre activates at is fairly common and consistent across most people, regardless of sex, race or age. The reason that pain may be more intense or not will depend on the amount of nerves firing and the type - there are different types, the sharp nasty stabby pain type and the deep throbbing achy pain type as well as a few others. Some people may have slightly abnormal thresholds - an example of this is in Epilepsy where the nerves in the brain get over excitable and tend to fire to quickly - this can cause a fit.

BUT - in general - there is no difference PHYSIOLOGICALLY between the healthy pain response in a male or female.

However, pain is more complex than this. Pain is effected by the subjective context. Simple and crude examples of this are the traditional cultural effects on pain. The British stereotype of stiff upper lip tends to result in people not displaying pain even if they feel it whilst the traditional Mediterranean stereotype sees pain elaborately displayed. Men and Women in Western Culture have very different peer group pressures that result in different responses to different pains. The battlefield soldier may tolerate horrendous pain whilst in an aroused angry state and women experience extreme pain during childbirth - and in my experience tend to yell a lot!

So culture, gender and context DO effect pain perception - as indeed may the time of day - pain is worse at night. Mood may obviously have considerable effect on pain perception - if you are depressed then your perception of pain will be different from that if you are elated. Thus trying to measure pain is really very complex - and this is why researchers use standardised scales. The scales are generally subjective - your impression of your pain - the classic one-to-ten scale is measured on your pain perception - 1 = no pain / 10 your worst imaginable pain.

SO - when people tell me that they have a high pain threshold it is a load of old… Equally when we are told that a person has a low pain threshold it is equally rubbish....
A very famous nurse researcher stated the following:
"Pain is whatever the person says it is - whenever the person says they have it"
And that is all we really need to know.

Dave Barton - Group Organiser of SKIP (Supporting Kids In Pain) http://shsskip.swan.ac.uk