Why does pain sometimes feel good?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science, Technology

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It seems bizarre to seek out experiences that are uncomfortable or downright painful. Yet examples abound: it’s common to eat painfully hot chillies, drink bitter coffee, or ‘feel the burn' when exercising - and enjoy it. CrowdScience listener Sandy is baffled by this seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon, and has asked us to investigate. Presenter Anand Jagatia turns guinea pig as he tests a variety of unpleasant sensations, and unpicks the reasons we’re sometimes attracted to them. He meets chilli-eating champion Shahina Waseem, who puts Anand’s own attraction to spicy food to the test. Food scientist John Hayes explains how our taste receptors work and why our genes affect the appeal of bitter food. Neuroscientist Soo Ahn Lee describes her research looking at what happens in participants’ brains when they eat chocolate and capsaicin, the chemical that makes chillies hot. As for the ‘pleasurable pain’ we sometimes experience when exercising, sports doctor Robin Chatterjee reveals the secrets of the ‘runner’s high’, while neuroscientist Siri Leknes explains why the feeling that something’s good for us can make discomfort pleasurable. Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Cathy Edwards Production co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Sound engineer: Sue Maillot

(Image: Young man have bath in ice covered lake in nature and looking up, Czech Republic Credit: CharlieChesvick via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cocklin.
0:02.8	Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them.
0:06.6	My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right.
0:10.6	In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people
0:16.0	who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world.
0:19.8	Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,
0:22.5	Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.9	I've only actually done like the proper ice bathing once. And I was like, whoa, this is intensely painful.
0:39.6	We've got quite the sauna culture, and I have to say,
0:42.4	plunging into, you know, freezing water when you're really hot,
0:46.0	is both pleasurable and painful.
0:49.7	Sometimes when I get really super stressed,
0:53.4	I sometimes enjoy eating really spicy foods.
0:59.1	My tongue is like literally burning.
1:02.5	Yeah, I'm kind of like, feel that kind of strong experiences of the spiciness kind of relieve my stress.
1:09.1	Or probably pain can cure another pain.
1:14.9	At the moment, I have a bilateral tennis elbow and an Achilles tendonitis. The reason being,
1:22.7	I've got a one-year-old. So I'm now lifting this relatively heavy one-year-old kid all the time. So even though I'm in pain,
1:33.8	I still do it because of the enjoyment or pleasure I get from seeing my one-year-old,
1:40.6	his smile and giggles. So that exceeds the pain that I'm experiencing from the tendinitis.
1:50.2	Pain is normally best avoided, but sometimes we can't escape it. And sometimes, as we just heard,
1:57.1	we deliberately seek it out. Why is that? I'm Ann Ann Jagatia, and in this episode of
	...

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