How One Pain Suppresses Another: The Science Behind Major Payne's Pain "Trick"

We learn early on that our bodies are fragile and we can get hurt if we’re not careful. Children spend the first few years of their lives collecting bumps and bruises, and learning the difference between safe and unsafe behaviors. Pain is the body’s way of telling us something is wrong, but over the course of hundreds of millions of years, evolution has made our built-in pain management systems weirdly complicated.

Believe it or not, you can find insight into the experience of pain in the 1995 military comedy Major Payne (streaming now on Peacock). The movie opens on the battlefield, smoke rolls over dark hills, and explosions punctuate the night as soldiers push their way into a drug compound. Major Benson Winifred Pain – known to his friends and enemies as Major Payne (Damon Wayans) – encounters a fellow soldier who’s been shot in the arm. He’s lying on the ground, bleeding, gritting his teeth in pain, and the major offers to help.

“Let me take a look at that,” Major Payne says, examining the wound. “Want me to show you a little trick to take your mind off that arm?” The injured soldier eagerly agrees and the major warns that he might “feel a little pressure” before grabbing a finger and snapping the bone at a 90 degree angle. “My finger, my finger!” the soldier screams, and Payne remarks that it “works every time.”

It’s not the most elegant solution, but Major Payne is correct that it works. Studies have shown that one painful stimulus can be suppressed by the introduction of another. The immediacy of a snapped bone might, at least temporarily, dull the pain of an existing bullet wound.

What is pain and how does it work?

Stub your toe, step on a toy, or touch a hot plate and you experience an immediate and intense discomfort. The immediate pain is usually followed by an unpleasant sensation which lingers and communicates in no uncertain terms that you shouldn’t do whatever you just did.

Pain comes in many flavors, both acute (the immediate pain of injury) and chronic (pain that lingers for months or years and sometimes has no clear cause). There’s nociceptive pain caused by injury and there’s neuropathic pain caused by nerve damage. These feelings can differ in their precise sensation and despite pain’s nearly universal nature, people struggle to describe what they’re feeling. Common descriptors include words like sharp, dull, burning, electric, throbbing, splitting, stabbing, shooting, and sickening, but even these don’t totally capture what pain feels like.

When it’s severe, pain can be all encompassing, blotting out all other thoughts and experiences. It’s no wonder we’ve spent thousands of years trying to figure out ways to make it stop. As much as we might dislike it though, most of the time pain is a helpful and necessary part of staying alive and healthy. It’s the way our bodies tell us something’s wrong and compel us to do something about it. Here’s how it works.

When we’re injured, pain receptors at the injury site send signals to the spinal cord, which then travel to the brain. Once there, the brain processes that signal, decides what to do about it, and sends out the marching orders. Those orders travel along different types of nerve fibers at different speeds. The signals running along myelinated fibers get where they’re going more quickly, they are the ones that tell you to pull your hand off the stove. Signals running along unmyelinated fibers move more slowly and are responsible for the broader, longer-lasting pain which encourages rest and healing.

Suppressing pain with pain (and distractions)

Brain puzzle missing a piece Photo: PM Images

The experience of pain is subjective, varying from person to person, and influenced by a number of other factors. Even the same injury to the same person might feel different on a different day or other differing circumstances. Understanding the variables which feed into the experience of pain help us to find better ways of managing it, including new strategies for treating chronic pain.

In experiments, scientists often use a research method called Conditioned Pain Modulation (CPM), which is the laboratory equivalent of Major Payne’s broken finger trick. The precise setup of experiments varies, but the underlying philosophy is the same. An initial painful stimulus, called the test stimulus, is administered first on its own and then again alongside a second (conditioning) painful stimulus.

Usually, the test stimulus is pain generated by heat or electricity and the conditioning stimulus is generated by cold water or an injection of fluid. What matters is that study participants experience two different pains, from different locations on the body, at the same time. Those studies confirm that the test stimulus is perceived as weaker in the presence of a control stimulus. In a separate study, researchers found they could achieve similar results by distracting the participants with puzzles and memory games. Give the brain something else to think about, whether it’s a game or another injury, and it won’t pay as much attention to the initial injury.

If you’re looking for a distraction, check out Major Payne streaming now on Peacock.