When Your Pain Receptors Are Activated

Aunt Alice couldn’t help dropping the hot casserole because her hand muscles contracted as a reflex response to the hot plate. A reflex is an automatic response to a stimulus (like a hot plate) that occurs without conscious thought. Our body has pain receptors to detect any painful stimulus our body may come in contact with. When these pain receptors are activated by a hot plate or other painful stimulus, signals are rapidly sent to the spinal cord. The spinal cord then immediately tells the muscles closest to the stimulus to either contract or relax in order to remove the stimulus. This reflex reaction bypasses the brain and allows the body to react much quicker than if it was under conscious control.

This happen to me the other day as well. I was getting a hot pan out of the oven and by accident it touched my arm. I withdrew it quickly and set it down. It took a few seconds later for me to actually start feeling the pain from the burn. The first instinct to most of us when we touch something hot is to withdraw our hand. If we didn’t have this reflex it would take the pain sensation longer to reach the brain and by then we might be seriously hurt. That’s why when we withdraw our hand it takes a little bit longer to feel the pain from touching the hot plate because it travels up the spinal cord to the brain where it’s finally felt.