Max Pain: How Much Pain Can A Person Take?

There is no ultimate threshold for pain in human beings. Researchers’ best guess is that the maximum pain a human can tolerate is somewhere higher than 11 dol (somewhere between childbirth and taking a blowtorch to your face). Your pain threshold is likely different (if only minutely) from every other person. The same is true for the pain threshold temperature (when heat or cold begins to register in your subjective mind as “painful”). For researchers to study anything with scientific precision, a scale of measurement is required, but establishing that scale for pain itself is very challenging. Physical, psychological, and genetic factors all play a role in the perception of pain for human beings, making precise quantification and comparison nearly impossible.