Why does stubbing your toe hurt so much?

Why does stubbing your toe hurt so much?

As you turn a corner in your home, a sudden sharp pain pierces your pinky toe. You let out a scream and find yourself frozen in place, desperately waiting for the throbbing of your broken toe to subside.

While the damage caused is usually minor, it's not as painful as stubbing your toe on a doorframe or table leg. So why does your toe hurt so badly when it does? The answer comes down to the number and type of nerve fibers in your foot, and the force with which you typically stub your toe.

Image source: Pixabay

The body's sense of pain originates in nerve cells called nociceptors, whose fibers insert into the skin, muscles, and internal organs and respond to signals released by damaged cells.

Different types of pain receptors respond to different types of injuries. For example, touching a scalding hot pan triggers heat pain receptors, while stubbing your toe activates mechanical pain receptors that are sensitive to pressure, cuts, and wounds.

When activated, the mechano-nociceptors send messages from the free nerve endings in the injured toe to dense bundles of nerve fibers that run into the spinal cord. From there, the signals quickly travel to the brain and pass through an information center called the thalamus before being forwarded to the wrinkled cerebral cortex.

The part of the cerebral cortex that responds to touch, temperature and pain signals is arranged in a curved shape in the brain, a bit like a headband, with different areas of the headband processing sensations in different parts of the body.

The specific area that processes the feet and toes is located in the center of the headband, where the two halves of the brain meet, and its size reflects the number of receptors in the feet. The super-sensitive face, mouth, and hands take up most of the space in the sensory headband, but the feet still take up a lot of space compared to the less sensitive torso and limbs.

Not all pain-related signals from short toes reach the brain at the same time.

The initial lightning-like pain that starts as a stabbing pain is transmitted by "A-delta fibers" - thin, fat-wrapped nerve fibers that send signals very efficiently. The dull ache that appears a few seconds later is caused by less efficient "C fibers," which have nerve endings covering a wide area, meaning several toes instead of just the tip of one. This pain can be worse if the injury triggers inflammation.

The nociceptors in the feet are particularly sensitive to physical trauma, such as a stubbed toe, because the feet carry very little fat to help cushion the blow. What's more, when you break a toe, you're likely striking these delicate nerve fibers with a force equivalent to two to three times your body weight, all concentrated over a tiny surface area.

Thankfully, the intense pain from a sprained toe usually goes away within minutes or hours. However, in a few cases, a stubby toe can lead to more serious tissue damage, such as a sprain or even a fracture or dislocation, according to the Cleveland Clinic. If the pain persists for several days and gets worse when you try to move the toe, it could be a sign of a more serious injury.

Source: Chongqing Tianji Network Co., Ltd.

Source: Live Science "Why does stubbing your toe hurt so much?"

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