How Bad is the Pain?

HEERENVEEN, NETHERLANDS - NOVEMBER 13: Olympic champion Marianne Timmer Marianne Timmer is helped onto a strectcher by her coach Jack Orie (C) after crashing with Jing Yu of China in the 500m race during the Essent ISU speed skating World Cup at the Thialf Stadium on November 13, 2009 in Heerenveen, Netherlands

Pain is relatively easy to measure. All you have to do is judge the tightness of the facial muscles, the tighter they are the more intense the pain. Take a look at the below photograph taken before the above photograph.



You can see there is more muscle pressure in her face.

You can see more intense pain in these photographs.



DOHA, QATAR - OCTOBER 29: Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark falls to the ground in pain from cramp against Vera Zvonareva of Russia in their round robin match during the Sony Ericsson Championships at the Khalifa Tennis and Squash Complex on October 29, 2009 in Doha, Qatar.



KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - SEPTEMBER 28: Heroin addict Ganamgul complains that his body is in pain while going through withdrawal on the second day of the detox program, after 17 years of addiction ,at the Kabul Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Center September 28, 2009 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Since the center opened in May 2009 it has rehabilitated over 400 addicts in it's 100 bed facility.

There is one exception, which is not the case above in the above photographs, where the pain becomes so excruciating that the victim will go into shock, and this is natures way of shutting down pain receptors and often the tightness will be much less than you'd expect.◦

How Bad is the Pain?