One study has revealed what the worst type of pain you could possibly feel is - and it isn’t what you think.
From tooth ache and a bad back all the way through to an upset tummy and breaking a bone - it's clear we all experience pain on very different levels.
However, while we may all have varying pain threshold levels, there's a general belief that childbirth is the absolute worst type of pain you can experience - and for good reason!
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I mean, you are pushing an entire human out of your body!
But, according to one study published back in 2020, this isn't actually true.
The study in question, which was published in the Headache journal, ranked the worst types of pain people can experience - including childbirth, gunshot wounds and a slipped disk.
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Childbirth came in at number two while cluster headaches surprisingly took the top spot.
The NHS explains that cluster headaches are 'severe headaches that can happen multiple times a day and continue for weeks or months'.
"They may stop for a while (weeks, months or years), or there may be no gap between headaches," the official website outlines.
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The main symptoms of a cluster headache include:
- a sharp, burning or piercing pain, usually on one side of the head, around the eye
- headaches that happen at the same time of year or at set times of the day
- headaches that start and stop quickly, without warning
- pain that can make you feel restless, you may want to walk around or move your body
- headaches that last between 15 minutes and three hours
Cluster headaches reportedly affect about one in 1,000 people - an estimated 65,000 people in the UK, according to Brain Research UK.
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The American researchers came to the conclusion that cluster headaches were more painful than childbirth, a stab wound and pancreatitis after asking 1,604 people who experienced cluster headaches to rank the amount of pain they endured during an attack against other agonising conditions.
Participants had to give a pain rating for each condition on a scale of 0 to 10 with anything above a seven categorised as 'severe pain'.
Cluster headaches ranked an average pain score of 9.7 out of 10 while labour pain was rated 7.2.
Pancreatitis - a condition where the pancreas becomes inflamed (swollen) over a short period of time - was third with 7.0.
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Up next were kidney stones (6.9), gallstones (6.3) and a gunshot wound which ranked in at a surprising 6.0
Slipped disc came next with 5.9 followed by migraine attack at 5.4, fibromyalgia at 5.2 and bone fracture also ranked at 5.2.
Heart attack and sciatica - which happens when the sciatic nerve, which runs from your lower back to your feet, is irritated or compressed - received 5.0 pain scores while stab wound came in at 4.9 before shingles - an infection that causes a painful rash - at 4.6.
Lumbar puncture likewise came in at 4.6 ahead of large organ biopsy at 4.4 before the lowest-ranked condition on the list, arthritis which received a 4.0/10 pain rating.
The researchers did acknowledge there were a number of limitations to their study, including that participants may not be able to accurately recall just how painful these conditions were.
However, they did conclude that 'cluster headache is reported by a large group of international respondents to be more intense than every other pain disorder examined'.
Rhiannon Ingle