We’ve all been there.
Sat in the middle of the office, rifling quickly through some paperwork.
Catch the paper at the wrong angle and suddenly you’re the bearer of a tiny cut on your fingers.
Tears in your eyes, teeth clenched, you try to hide from the rest of the office just how much pain you’re in.
Paper cuts hurt. A lot.
These tiny, unassuming little slices in your skin seem disproportionate to the amount of discomfort they cause.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
This phenomenon is something that has captured the interest of researchers. Perhaps because of the minute scale of the injury, or the shame of being taken down by a sheet of paper, it’s rare that people seek out an explanation.
But now we may have a greater understanding of papercuts, thanks to Dr Gabriel Neal, a Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Texas A&M University, who acknowledges the rarity of his research in a recent article for The Conversation:
“While both intentional self-injury and major accidental injury have inspired important, ongoing research into their psychological effects, minor accidental injuries do not – and that is OK. There are more pressing issues in need of research than paper cuts.”
And while Dr Neal notes the lack of severity of paper cut, he also explains exactly why they hurt so much.
For starters, he explains, the parts of the body that we usually get paper cuts on are part of the problem.
Fingers, tongues – both are highly sensitive. These are the body parts that most frequently come into contact with paper and, as such, are most at risk of paper-related injuries.
Thanks to the pain receptors in your fingers, you feel the tiny cut much more than you would on your elbow, for example, as Dr Neal explains:
“The nerve networks of these body parts can discriminate with exceptional clarity and specificity, sensations of pressure, heat, cold and injury. Our brains even have specialized areas to receive signals coming from these parts in high definition.”
The tongue and the fingers, Dr Neal notes, are body parts that – even when injured – we find ourselves using all the time. This means that you may not just feel the pain of your papercut in the initial moments after the injury.
Even after the blood has stopped oozing from your cut, you may find that the wound becomes irritated or reopens throughout the day, due to your use of the affected body parts.
Finally, Dr Neal explains, the specific depth and shape of the cut that paper can cause is particularly conducive to pain. Unlike more serious injuries, papercuts damage your nerve fibers just enough to hurt, but not enough to stop them from functioning:
“The depth of the wound is perfect for exposing and exciting the nerve fibers of the skin without damaging them the way a deeper, more destructive injury can severely damage the nerve fibers impairing their ability to communicate pain. With a paper cut, the nerve fibers are lit, and they are fully operational.”
So not only are papercuts irritatingly small, they are almost precisely formed to create as much pain as possible.
Short of doing away with paper altogether, Dr Neal recommends the following to keep the disruption from your papercut minimal: first, wash your hands to rid your skin of any bacteria that could cause the cut to become infected. And if you can, cover the wound with a band-aid or other dressing to lessen the impact of daily activities on the affected area.
Of course, all that is well and good for a papercut on your hands, but not much use when it comes to your tongue.
In this case, perhaps it’s simply time to stop licking those envelopes and buy some self-sealing ones.
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