Rubbing your elbow or toe after hitting them can really help

This is the automatic reaction after being hit the elbow or being bumped toe.

After moaning with pain and a few strong words, most people try to better mbadage their wound.

Now, scientists suggest that it can actually work because stroking one's own skin can cancel the pain sensation.

People who were asked to caress their arms in a study were less able to feel narrow plastic sticks being thrust into their arms.

When they were hit by weak pulsations of electricity in their thumbs, they took longer to record the sensation in their brains.

This is the automatic reaction after being hit the elbow or being bumped toe. After moaning with pain and a few strong words, most people try to rub the wound better

We are programmed to react when others touch us, but not when we touch ourselves, which is why most people can not tickle.

The advantage of this may be that rubbing your arm or crushed toe prevents the brain from reacting to touch, so the pain does not register either.

Rebecca Böhme, Head of Study at Linköping University in Sweden, said: "Very young children, we learn that our parents will be better off when we get hurt.

"As you get older, you rub your elbow when it hurts instinctively without even thinking about it.

"Our research has used uncomfortable rather than painful stimuli, but evidence suggests that better rubbing an injured body part can work by reducing activity in the somatosensory part of the brain."

In this study, researchers zapped 10 people with 300 weak electrical pulses via an electrode at the base of the thumb.

It was not painful, but the pulsations were strong enough for the thumb to contract.

People who asked to caress their arm while this was happening took longer to record the sensation in their brain, based on electrode readings on their head.

The same benefit was not obtained when a researcher caressed their arm.

A separate group of 17 people were stung with thin plastic sticks while stroking their arms.

This should have been uncomfortable, but for those people who rub their arms, the plastic wire had to be pushed into their skin with 100 times more force for them to feel it. This has been compared to those affected by someone else.

The study suggests that a partner or friend rubbing his arm when he is injured will not work, according to a separate experiment consisting of placing people in MRI machines.

This showed their brains lit up when someone else stroked their arms.

But the action of someone gently caressing the arm itself has been shown to have little effect on the brain except that the movement has activated a region called M1 which, in from other studies, reduces the pain.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Journal, stated, "This could provide a mechanistic explanation for the widely observed behavior of rubbing a sore spot in one's own body."

Experts believe that the touch of someone else has a lot of effect, because we are social creatures that use it, for example, to hold hands or to hold each other tightly. his arms to bind to each other.

However, when we touch ourselves, it is much less meaningful and we know that it happens, so that the signals sent from the nerve endings of the skin to the spinal cord and the brain are less powerful.

The benefits may be that other sensations, such as pain, are less strong, but only when you stroke the precise part of the body that has been injured.

The forearms were rubbed because the radial nerve extends from the thumb to the arm.

Dr. Böhme added, "We found a very clear difference between being touched by someone else and the touch of self.

In the latter case, activity in several parts of the brain has been reduced. We can see evidence that this difference occurs in the spinal cord, before perceptions are processed in the brain. & # 39;