My sense of pain seems to be pretty well calibrated. I had a minor strain in my knee this winter and had to use lots of aspirin and favor it for a few weeks, now I can again walk, run or bike. My pain threshold seems to warn me when it matters.

It is very nice to hear stories of healthy mom and daughter relationships. My Dad was a red head and had a very high pain tolerance and I too have one. It has shifted some since I turned 65.

Well, with stomach ache I'm a sissy, can't take it. Muscular pain I can endure quite easily. When I made my tattoos, it actually helped me enduring pain. However, I still can't handle well stomach ache... lol!!!

I think that In certain limited situations a high tolerance for pain may be beneficial. It seems that many factors are involved in pain tolerance.

I would not have root canal treatment without a local anaesthetic unless I were able to practice transcend dental medication.

Whenever I seriously hurt myself I sort of "go catatonic" to deal with it. Minor injuries release a powerful blast of language. I won't behave stupidly, but I can shut out acute pain, such as when I got shot, when I crashed into a train, when I blew off half the skin on the back of my right hand with boiling oil, when I seriously sliced three fingers of my right hand in an electric table saw, when I .........
I'm silent, other than saying something like "I think I may need to have this seen to". My wife knows when it's serious by my non-reaction.
I don't think it's pain tolerance but rather a survival trait.

Interestingly, research into pain tolerance shows that women generally have a higher pain tolerance than men but women who've given natural childbirth, no drugs, have a f'king huge pain tolerance. Anecdotally, working with people with chronic pain, I've seen that it varies enormously between people and changes dramatically with pain experience. People who suffer from chronic pain often develop a huge tolerance.

Four years ago we moved into a new house. I carried a heavy box of books down cellar, missed a step and “sprained” my ankle. After a week of moving, carrying heavy objects, cleaning, unpacking, etc, decided to get it Checked as foot was turning funny colors. Ends up I broke my ankle in 3 places….

Wow, nice to see that lineage of beauty…good luck with the thumb

One of my nephews has full blown Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. It's a birth condition that among other things causes extreme pain tolerance. He could seriously hurt himself and never know it. When he was in grade school he got a reputation as the toughest 3rd grader around -- the other kids (even older grades) learned that they couldn't hurt him so they learned to not fight him. Not that he's ever been belligerent -- he's a good kid, but he was a boy in school.
His father caught him more than once doing dangerous things like to 'get the ball back', etc. with his brother. They had to watch him fairly closely to keep him from accidentally causing himself an accident.

We wonder how many professional athletes have it. It could be very useful to just power through situations that would debilitate most people.

It also causes other effects like having different parts of the body grow at abnormal rates and hearing problems. He had surgeries as a child to correct the worst problems.

Everyone in my immediate family also has very high pain tolerances. After dealing with him, we wonder if we all don't have a little bit of the effect -- just not as severe.

Our society doesn't make any exceptions. Everyone has something. Nobody gets out alive and we all make our own ways. Ha, ha.

We were taught how to in the military