Touching Ourselves Relieves Pain

Ever wonder why we reflexively hold those parts of our bodies that hurt? Now we know: because touching our hurting parts makes at least some of the pain go away. HealthDay reports that researchers at University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in the United Kingdom employed a commonly-used illusion of pain (if you put your index and ring fingers in warm water and your middle finger in cool water, you will think your middle finger is burning) to persuade participants in a study that their middle fingers were painfully hot. They then asked some of the participants to touch their hurting fingers to fingers on their other hand, and asked other participants to touch their hurting finger to another person's hand. The researchers found that those who touched their own hands felt 64 percent less painful heat.

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