Fibromyalgiaandchronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)both involve low pain thresholds.
Your pain threshold is the point at which a sensation becomes painful.
It’s not the same thing as tolerance, which is how much you might handle.
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For an example of the pain threshold, think of a dentist drilling in your teeth.
It doesn’t hurt…until it does!
It all depends on when your threshold is reached, and it’s different for all of us.
Another real-life example is the blood pressure cuff that nurses wrap around your arm and pump up.
At first, there’s light pressure.
Then the pressure increases and increases.
For someone with a high pain threshold, it may never get uncomfortable.
For someone with a low threshold, it may start uncomfortable and become quite painful.
That’s why things that aren’t painful to most people can cause pain in those with this condition.
The medical term for pain brought on by things that don’t normally hurt isallodynia.
Both concluded that it’s a reasonably accurate way to identify a low pressure-pain threshold.
Fibromyalgia typically involves a low threshold to temperature-related pain, known as thermal allodynia.
This results in extreme temperature sensitivity, either to cold, heat, or both.
This often shows up as someone being “sensitive” to things like tags in their shirt.
It may make heavier or coarser fabrics feel like sandpaper.
A hand placed on the upper arm may not hurt, while lightly rubbing the skin does.
At least one study shows that pain thresholds drop following exercise for people with this condition.
That response may be part of a key symptom of the diseases, which is calledpost-exertional malaise.
Threshold vs.
Tolerance
The term pain threshold is often confused with (or wrongly used interchangeably with) pain tolerance.
These terms are actually quite different.
Pain tolerance is the amount of pain you’re able to take before breaking down.
The pain threshold is the point at which pain begins to be felt.
Both are entirely subjective.
On the surface, these two concepts can seem similar.
However, someone with a low threshold can have a high tolerance and vice versa.
Imagine someone who rarely feels pain (high threshold) but then has a major injury.
Because they have little experience dealing with pain, their tolerance might be low.
A person with a low threshold and low tolerance may be severely debilitated anytime they’re in pain.
Someone with a high threshold and high tolerance, on the other hand, may rarely notice pain.
These are simply physiological responses they can’t control.
With that said, these levels can and do change over time.
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2014 Jul 8;10:46.Higher serum S100B and BDNF levels are correlated with a lower pressure-pain threshold in fibromyalgia.
