Re: is it true that females can endure more pain than males?If so,how much more

Hello no name entered,

I did a quick search of abstracts on MedLine (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Entrez/medline.html), a database of 
research articles, using "pain tolerance AND gender" and found that in general men have a higher tolerance for
most types of pain than women.  They usually test heat, cold, electrical shock, etc.  One of those is shown below.
It also appears that if a pre-existing pain already is present, then the tolerances to additional pain are quite similar,
as mentioned in the second article below... 


Avoidance versus focused attention and the perception of pain: differential effects for men and women.

Keogh E, Hatton K, Ellery D

Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London, UK. 

The aim of the current investigation was to compare the effects of two different attentional strategies (focused vs. avoidance) on how males 
and females respond to experimentally induced pain. One hundred healthy adults were instructed to either attend towards or away from 
cold  pressor pain. Measures of pain tolerance, pain threshold and recovery were taken, as were self-report measures of sensory and 
affective pain  experiences.  As expected, gender was found to moderate tolerance to pain: males were found to be more tolerant to cold 
pressor pain than females. With respect to the self-report measures, males reported less sensory pain when they attended toward the pain 
than when they avoided it. However, a similar effect was not found in women, suggesting that attentional focusing may only be a useful 
strategy for males. These results are discussed in  light of previous research. 

Effects of gender and acute dental pain on thermal pain responses.

Edwards RR, Fillingim RB, Yamauchi S, Sigurdsson A, Bunting S, Mohorn SG, Maixner W

Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 35294-1170, USA. 

OBJECTIVE: Considerable research suggests that females exhibit greater sensitivity to laboratory pain procedures than do males; however,
whether the presence of acute clinical pain influences this sex difference in pain sensitivity has not been investigated. The present 
experiment investigated the effects of sex and acute dental pain on laboratory pain responses. DESIGN: Thermal pain onset and tolerance 
were determined in 46 dental patients (15 male, 31 female) experiencing pain due to acute irreversible pulpitis and in 33 healthy controls (13 
male, 20 female). In addition, measures of mood and coping were obtained in all participants. All subjects participated in two experimental 
sessions.  The first session took place immediately before the patients underwent endodontic treatment for relief of pulpal pain. The second 
session took place approximately 1-2 weeks later, when pulpitis patients were pain free after treatment. During each session, thermal pain 
onset and tolerance were assessed with a 1-cm2 contact thermode applied to the right volar forearm using an ascending method of limits. 
RESULTS: During both sessions, thermal pain onset and tolerance were lower in control females than in control males; however, male and 
female pulpitis patients did not  differ in their thermal pain responses during either session. Pulpitis patients also showed greater affective 
distress than controls. CONCLUSIONS:  These data suggest that the sex difference in thermal pain sensitivity frequently reported in pain-free 
subjects appears to be absent in patients presenting with acute dental pain. However, this effect cannot be explained solely based on the 
presence of clinical pain because the effect on pain threshold and tolerance persisted into session 2, when pulpitis patients were pain free. 
Potential explanations for these results are discussed.