If you flinch where others merely frown, you might want to take a look at your lifestyle. That’s because environmental factors may have retuned your genes to make you more sensitive to pain.
“We know that stressful life events such as diet, smoking, drinking and exposure to pollution all have effects on your genes, but we didn’t know if they specifically affected pain genes,” says Tim Spector of King’s College London.
Now, a study of identical twins suggests they do. It seems that epigenetic changes – environmentally triggered chemical alterations that affect how active your genes are – can dial your pain threshold up or down.
Share this article
Read the full, original story: Ouch! Pain threshold genes amplified by lifestyle
