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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

My girlfriend seems to handle "direct" pain, like hitting stuff, getting cut or back pain, compared to me. Most times she just keeps going without uttering much at all.

But she's significantly worse at dealing with cold, heat and high brightness. One thing is that her body may be worse at regulating temperature, but she can't stand going out in the cold even for a few minutes unless she's dressed like she's visiting one of the poles.

Me on the other hand have little problem handling the discomfort of being cold or too hot. I also have no issue handling very bright sunny days without sunglasses, while she cannot.

Writing this it seems tempting to view it in an evolutionary perspective... giving birth is a very painful event one must endure, and when hunting it certainly helps to keep pushing even though you're too cold or too hot... or maybe it's just the way the two of us are wired up.

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So uhm, I’m a male reporting in with my anecdata. I am just like your girlfriend.

Can’t tolerate extreme temperatures (especially cold), but have a fairly high tolerance for physical pain compared to what’s normal I think.

And I am INFAMOUS for needing sunglasses. Whenever I’m visiting my folks, they know it’s the thing I’ll complain about if I’ll be in the sun and my mom will usually have bought sunglasses just for me.

Eye colour has a lot to do with how much light your retinas let in, iirc. Would this explain your sensitivity?

I'm not sure of a relationship there, but I recall reading reports for a long time that red-heads felt less pain than other people - as a red-head this amuses me, but I have no personal data to share.

Random source is random:

http://sciencenordic.com/redheads-feel-different-kind-pain

My dentist told me that people with red hair are less susceptible to the effects of novicane. I have red in my beard and always need a second injection when getting drilled. She said this is the cause.

I've heard this as well. I have blue eyes and extreme sensitivity to light, much moreso than my partner w/ brown eyes. I can't be outside without sunglasses for instance, and I've noticed polarized lens's are far more effective at reducing my pain point than normal tinted glasses. I also can't just flick on the lights in the morning when I wake up, I have to gradually introduce my eyes to light.

I think that the way we handle localised pain vs general pain (and in particular heat and cold) has a lot more to do with how we grew up.

If you spent a lot of time in the outdoors/elements as a kid, you're going to be a lot better at handling adverse environmental conditions.

I spent my childhood wearing shorts and sandals to school, even when it was literally freezing outside (never really got much below freezing though). I also think that 15 C is comfortable inside temperature because half the houses in New Zealand don't have good insulation and heating, if any. I also never need sunglasses; I never wore them as a kid because I wore prescription glasses instead.

I handle direct pain fairly well too, because I grew up with two older brothers, one of whom enjoyed hitting me to the point that in retrospect I'd classify it as sibling abuse. I also spent a lot of my adolescence and university years doing physical work in kitchens and on building sites. Injuries such as burns, bruises, and cuts don't really bother me. Loud noises don't bother me either, from a combination of power tools, using firearms without adequate protection, and spending too long in front of large speakers in nightclubs and at festivals.

People who haven't grown up handling particular discomforts and conditions will be less willing and/or capable of handling them as an adult.

> I think that the way we handle localised pain vs general pain (and in particular heat and cold) has a lot more to do with how we grew up.

I definitely spent a lot of time in the cold as a kid. During walks in the forest during winter I would play with streams, building dams etc, even though the stream was starting to freeze over. I also didn't wear much clothing compared to others during winter. My gf did no such thing.

A lot of being cold has to do with body mass though. The larger your muscles -> the more they generate heat and the more they insulate. When I was at my bulkiest I'd be sweaty in a 60F/15C room. When I was at my skinniest I'd be freezing my bones off at that temp.

Getting cold, sure. I know this first hand as I lost weight and went from 35 BMI to 25 BMI not long ago. These days I get much more easily cold, and it's been strange having to plan to bring sweaters etc.

But my point was that my gf can't stand being cold. I don't enjoy it, but I don't mind being cold. It's not pleasant when you start to lose sensation in your limbs, but I can deal with it fine. My gf can't stand 3 seconds outside in -5C without at least five layers of insulation from top to toe.

Anecdotal, but my relationship is the opposite. I can take physical blows and shrug them off, to which my partner seems relatively sensitive.

On the other hand, I perceive I'm much more sensitive to light and temperature. Indeed I literally can't hold her coffee cups, drink hot drinks and soup, or hold microwaved meals because of pain overload which she can without thought. And I assure you this isn't because of conditional exposure or anything on her behalf to harsh conditions, she's a relatively delicate creature.

Growing up, I often wondered whether there's just a greater deal of variation in pain and sensory perception in the population than generally accepted. I remember watching people jump into cold pools during swimming carnivals, and I had to seriously wonder whether those people were experiencing what I was experiencing, because, while I'm being a bit melodramatic here, you might as well ask me to consider putting my hand in a fire, and some of these people I swear were amidst revelling in it...

Pain management definitely differs from person to person. It’s clearly varying within just yourself from one type of pain to another. I’ve experienced differences between pains as well.

I’m the same, I’ve been in extreme pain before and just lived with it, but discomfort drives me up the wall. I had an impinged nerve in my neck and it took me months to see a doctor, who was shocked that I hadn’t come screaming in on day one. Meanwhile a humid day brings me down like a sack of dirt.

I don’t get it.

Just a note, but it is possible for anyone to become hardened to cold weather with gradual exposure over time. I used to feel cold like death but now I easily walk around in casual clothes in 30 degree weather.

I often get judged for wearing shorts and a hoodie in winter weather, but I don't see why it's such a big deal. I really dislike bundling up every single time I step outside. If I'm going to the grocery store, I'm fine going in my pajamas because I'm going to be outside for around 30 seconds.

Keeping your core warm is the essential component to keeping your body warm for long periods of time.

I'll happily go outside down to -5 C/20 F weather outside wearing shorts and a warm jacket, as long as it isn't too windy.

Do you work for the Minneapolis tourism association?

You are correct, and it's kind of insane to me how much of a "baseline" there is to what "tolerable temperatures" feel like. You start to notice this a lot living in a place with radical temperature swings. If gets up to 35F in February, I can wear a T-shirt. When it first drops to 45F in October, it feels like the arctic.

These are not necessarily all gender differences; they can also simply be personal differences. For example, I deal worse with bright light than my wife. She does claim women are worse at regulating their temperature and therefore I should keep her warm, but apparently my body does a poor job of that. I certainly dislike cold, but my son loves it (we both hate it when it's too hot).

It's probably a mix of gender-related biological differences, personal differences, and cultural differences. Is it cultural that women are expected to keep going (taking care of children and household) in the face of discomfort, pain, injury and/or illness? Or are they biologically better equipped to do so?

A common (not pain-related) claim used to be that women are better at multi-tasking than men, but as I understand it, that turned out to be caused by cultural expectations, with women culturally expected to manage multiple things at once while men were allowed to focus on a single task. Similarly, other aspects we think of as biological have turned out to be nurture rather than nature.

But there's also likely to be many biological differences that haven't been sufficiently explored yet. As the article points out, research is often done primarily on male mice (and male people), ignoring the possibility that things might work differently for women.

Regarding the cold, that has to do with the nature that females tend to have less muscle mass than males. Bodymass produces heat.

But females hace more percentage of insulating fat on average.

I think temperature tolerance might be directly related to sex hormones. I'm on testosterone replacement therapy and when my T-levels are high I notice my temperature comfort range is 63-83. But when my levels fall because I ran out of a prescription my threshold changes to 68-78 a narrower band of comfort.

>I also have no issue handling very bright sunny days without sunglasses,

watch out for cataract

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