A little known condition that affects about one in 100 Britons is responsible for the most intensive pain ever felt, according to an intriguing study.
Called cluster headaches, it sees patients laid low by searing pain in their heads that can last for hours multiple times a day, and for which regular painkillers are useless.
The American study found cluster headaches were more agonising than labour pains, gunshot wounds and bone fractures, the research found.
The analysis involved asking a group of 1,604 cluster headache patients to compare the pain they experience with over a dozen painful injuries and conditions they’d experienced — including stab wounds and heart attacks.
Coming third after childbirth was pancreatitis, a condition where the pancreas, a small digestive organ behind the stomach, becomes severely and painfully swollen.
Pancreatitis can be triggered by gallstones or drinking too much alcohol.
Kidney stones and gallstones, where small crystalline deposits form inside the organs and cause searing pain if they grow big enough, were also high scorers.
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For the analysis, participants were asked to rate the intensity of pain they felt when suffering the problem on a scale of 0 to 10.
Surprisingly, childbirth came in at only 7.2.
Patients unlucky enough to be shot with a gun gave the experience an average of 6 on the pain scale.
Surgeons have previously reported pain from gunshot wounds varies significantly depending on the location of the shot, with the stomach, back, groin and neck considered to be particularly agonising due to the concentration of nerves.
Slipping a disc, also called a disc herniation, where soft tissue between the bones of the spine bulges out and presses on nerves, was just a fraction less painful than getting shot coming in at 5.9.
Migraines ranked eight, with a score of 5.4, followed by fibromyalgia — a condition believed to be linked to misfires in the nervous system.
Heart attacks only came in at a 5, just below breaking a bone, and the same as sciatica, a condition where a nerve that runs from your lower feet to your back becomes painfully compressed.
This meant both conditions narrowly beat getting stabbed which only came in a 4.9 — though much like gunshot wounds the pain of such injuries can vary significantly on location.
Cluster headaches are a rare and poorly understood condition that affect an estimated 65,000 people in Britain.
The headaches cause a severe, sharp, burning or piercing pain, usually on one side of the head, around the eye.
While giving birth certainly ranked as severe pain (7.2), it didn’t take the top spot.
They start and stop quickly without warning and last up to three hours with episodes occurring multiple times a day and for weeks or even months at a time.
The pain is so bad that over the counter painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen are effectively useless.
Experts don’t know what triggers cluster headaches but they are known to be more commonly diagnosed among people in 30s and are about six times more common in men than in women.
On the opposite end of the pain scale was arthritis — a common condition that causes pain and inflammation in the joints. This scored a four, which still medics consider to be more intense than mild pain.
Experts use pain scales as an indicator of an individual’s experience of an injury or condition.
However, as pain is a subjective experience, scales have limitations.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Headache, said the accuracy of patients’ pain scores could be compromised by participants’ poor memory.
They were asked to recall injuries or medical emergencies that may have happened years ago.
