Why do paper cuts hurt so much?

Paper cuts, despite being minor and shallow wounds, can cause significant pain.

It has less to do with the size of the cuts themselves, and more to do with the areas of the body in which we often experience paper cuts.

Your nerves: Manhattan vs. rural Ohio

Our face, hands and fingertips are richly innervated, meaning they’re filled with tiny nerves and nerve endings that need to receive sensory information from touch in order for us to perform fine motor functions.

Each of those nerves is like a fiber optic cable, meticulously engineered to transmit vast amounts of information swiftly and accurately between our brains and the rest of our bodies.

A body part like the fingertip is like Manhattan — filled with crisscrossing cables for a dense population.

Even a small event in Manhattan could disrupt online connections for many people.

But our backs are more like a desolate area of Nebraska, where a car could hit a utility pole and affect service for only a few residents.

That’s why the pain of common paper cuts is so exquisite — a paper cut on your finger, lips or tongue is cutting through many more nerve endings and lighting up more pain receptors than it might on your back.

Those densely innervated areas of the body also are richly supplied with blood.

Many tiny capillaries stretch underneath the skin of your face, hands and fingers, so cutting through them with the edge of a piece of paper also causes you to bleed more than if you’d been cut elsewhere on the body.

For some people, paper cuts are even worse.

Those with neuropathy (nerve damage), such as the damage to hands and feet caused by diabetes, can sometimes experience less pain with paper cuts and also make these patients prone to poorly healing wounds.

An immune disease like fibromyalgia, which changes the way the brain recognizes pain signals, can also make people more sensitive to cuts.

On the other hand, some people with nerve damage may not feel a paper cut at all, which could actually lead to more damage.

The pain from paper cuts is protective — it makes you realize you have a cut and forces you to baby that area of the body for a day or two, helping avoid infection or further damage.

But if you don’t have sensation and don’t feel the pain, you’re less careful with the cut and it’s less likely to heal.

Preventing and treating paper cuts

• Dry or cold skin is more prone to paper cuts. To protect your skin, stay moisturized and wear gloves in cold weather.
• Using tools to open and seal envelopes can effectively prevent common paper cuts on hands and lips.
• For a superficial paper cut, clean the area, keep the edges of the cut together, and apply antibiotic ointment and a bandage to prevent infection. Deeper cuts may need medical attention.
• Paper cuts usually heal in two to three days. If it doesn't improve, especially if you have diabetes or are immunocompromised, consult your doctor to check for infection.

Our fingers and hands are capable of performing various tasks daily: using a pen, cooking, cutting, and feeling objects in the dark.

We’re able to do this all because of the many nerve endings and nerve organelles in our fingertips.

Next time you get a paper cut, consider that the reason it’s so painful is the same reason you’re able to do so much with your hands.