Is it true that blue -eyed people are less sensitive to pain?

There is a belief that people with blue eyes perceive the pain not like the rest. We decided to check if this is confirmed by scientific data.

They write about the lower sensitivity of blue -eyed people to pain in blogs about advertising And family, V social networks, V aggregators news and on sitesdedicated to technologies, on entertainment Portals, sites for women and even in medical magazines. In this case, you can find no less common statement that people with blue eyes, vice versa, they feel more acutely, and Sometimes These theses are completely paradoxically coexisted in one text.

Pain, according to definition The International Association for the Study of Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with the actual or potential damage to tissues. The pain is classified by its character (aching, shooting, pulsating, burning, pressing or bursting, etc.), durations (acute, subacute, chronic, short -term), localization (superficial or internal. Visceralas well as phantom) and the development mechanism. It is this classification that is important in order to answer the question whether people with a certain eye color can feel pain differently.

The pain mechanism of development is accepted divide On nociceptive, neuropathic and nociplastic. 

The most common, nociceptive pain occurs in response to damage to tissues or organs or in order to avoid injury. So, touching a hot plate, we instinctively bothering our hand so as not to get a stronger burn. Special neurons are responsible for the occurrence of this type of pain - nocireceptors located mainly in the skin, as well as in the internal organs. 

The cause of neuropathic pain is damage to peripheral or central nerves, for example, with diabetes, HIV, chemo- or radiation therapy, various neuralgia. 

Finally, nociplastic pain can occur not only as a combination of nociceptive and neuropathic pain, but also without damage to tissues, organs or nerves. This is the rarest species of pain, and it is most difficult to diagnose and treat - the doctor may not find any violations.

As it becomes clear from this classification, if people with blue eyes perceive the pain differently, then we should talk about nociceptive pain, since neuropathic arises when nose -sized nociplastic pain is not known to science.

A study on the reaction to the pain of people with a different eye color, on which Reference Many media, was carried out under the leadership of the Doctor of Medicine Inna Belfer from the University of Pittsburgh. About his results she told In 2014, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Pain. Belfer with colleagues evaluated the level of pain after epidural anesthesia in women during childbirth. In total, the group had 58 participants: 24 of them had a dark eye color (different shades of the carriage), and 34 had light (blue or green). Doctors noted that after anesthesia, women in labor from the second group evaluated their level of pain - both at rest and in motion - lower than women in labor from the first. At the same time, the researcher herself commented on her observations as follows: “Due to the small sample size, we cannot get convincing evidence for our conclusions.”

Belfer is recognized specialist In the field of pain study, in the database of the PubMed medical information aggregator 77 articles its authorship or co -authorship. She occupies High posts in specialized organizations: the National Center for Additional and Integrative Health (USA), the Consortium on the Pain of the National Institute of Health (USA), the Association for the Study of Pain (USA), etc. 

In the same 2014, when Belfer announced her observations at the conference, she with co -authors Published Scientific article "Mechanisms of birth pain." In it, scientists described the identified patterns between the level of pain and the psycho-emotional state of a woman, her weight, the number of births before, socio-demographic factors, as well as a number of genes. However, among all this diversity of the studied ties, the color of the eye was not mentioned. There is no mention of this observation in the works of Belfer, published after 2014. Apparently, the scientists themselves, although they talked about their observations, did not consider them scientifically significant or, perhaps, in another sample the result was the opposite and the connection between the color of the eyes and the level of pain did not further investigate. In general, Belfer has enough works about the connection of both nociceptive and neuropathic Pain with genes. She studied how perceived Pain depending on the floor, investigated the connection between certain genes and the occurrence of a chronic pain syndrome, as well as postoperative use Morphine. However, the color of the eyes was never mentioned again as a factor that defines pain sensitivity.

In 2017, the question of the connection of the color of the eye and the level of pain Turned Specialists from the University of Olborg (Denmark). They invited 60 men and women without chronic pain and divided them into two groups: people with bright eyes and hair and people with dark eyes and hair. Then all volunteers passed three tests to the level of susceptibility to nociceptive pain: the pain threshold when pressing, cold test and pain questionnaire Mc Gill. Volunteers with dark eyes and hair, regardless of gender, were more susceptible to pain from cold, the results of the test on the pressure of a statistical difference were not demonstrated. Experts suggested that the genes responsible for the production of melanin (pigment that gives color to hair and eyes) can also participate in the mechanics of pain. However, scientists found it difficult to determine what kind of genes we are talking about.

In 2018, scientists from the University of Ohio investigated Nociceptive pain in 300 women with different eyes during dental procedures. To avoid the bias of the dentist, all subjects were in dark glasses. They made an anesthetic injection of a solution of 2% of lidocaine with epinephrine and asked to evaluate the level of pain during the administration of the needle (mucous membrane puncture), placement of the needle (the penetration of the needle through the tissue to the place of administration of the drug) and the introduction of an anesthetic itself. After that, the editor’s assistant took off his glasses from the participants and photographed their eyes. Then three disinterested assistant determined the color of the woman's eyes on this photograph. As a result, 133 were classified as volunteers with a dark eye, and 167 with a bright one. There was no significant difference in the assessment of pain at each of the three points between them. Experts stipulate that the results should be interpreted carefully - at least not extrapolate them on men and take into account that all the women participating in the study were representatives of the Caucasian race.

In 2024, Turkish scientists AnalyzedAs women with different eyes of the eye, evaluate pain after the treatment of pulpit in the lower molars. The study was attended by 110 women (55 with a dark eye and 55 with light), who appealed to the dental pain in the clinic at the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Hatai Mustafa Kemal. The level of pain was estimated after anesthesia during treatment, after 24, 48, 72 hours and seven days after treatment. No difference in pain in patients with different eyes was found.

Thus, most studies do not find the connection between the level of pain and the color of the eyes. Moreover, although there were several such experiments, the media mainly refer to Inna Belfer’s speech at the conference in 2014. However, at the same time, they do not mention that the results obtained in the extremely meager sample did not even form the basis of the scientific article, and the scientist herself in her speech said that the data requires further verification.

Image on the cover: Image by Alexa from Pixabay

Most likely not true

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