That, after all, is their job. The intense pain of paper cuts could be blamed on the sensitivity our hands and fingers Credit: iStock. Unfortunately, each of us is going to face the prospect of enduring a few paper cuts as we go about our lives. Luckily, the common saying is probably wrong. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Body Matters Biology. Why paper cuts hurt so much.
Share using Email. By Jason G Goldman 5th September The extreme pain felt when something injures your fingers is simply the result of evolution working as it should. But there is something to the idea that paper is a uniquely painful weapon. Home football game on Saturday. Review gameday parking and traffic info for hospital patients and visitors. Masks are required in all our health care locations.
View current visitor policy. For such tiny, shallow wounds, paper cuts can cause a lot of pain. So why do these small cuts sometimes seem to hurt as much as more-significant injuries? It has less to do with the size of the cuts themselves, and more to do with the areas of the body in which we often experience paper cuts. Each of those nerve fibers is like an electric cable or telephone wire, engineered to carry different types of information between our brains and the rest of our bodies.
A body part like the fingertip is like Manhattan — filled with crisscrossing wires and cables for a dense population. Even a small event in Manhattan could disrupt electric or telephone service for many people. But our backs are more like a desolate area of Kansas, where a car could hit a telephone pole and affect service for only a few residents. Those densely innervated areas of the body also are richly supplied with blood.
Those with neuropathy nerve damage , such as the damage to hands and feet caused by diabetes, can experience greater pain with paper cuts. This can actually be proven by doing a simple test. Take a paperclip and unfold it so that both ends are pointing in the same direction.
As we have many nerve endings in the skin in those parts of the body, the two points have to get really close to each other before being unable to fell them apart. So we have the first part of the equation: our hands can hurt — a lot. A lot of people on the internet claim that since paper is porous, it is a better host to bacteria than the clean surface of a razor or a knife.
Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40, subscribers can't be wrong. Paper is pretty sharp sharp, yet duller than knives and flimsier than needles — a combination that can sometimes result in awful cuts.
When it cuts open the skin, paper leaves behind a chaotic path of destruction rather than a smooth laceration. It rips, tears, and shreds the skin, rather than making a clean slice. Normally, paper is malleable.
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