It is not what you think

It has long been thought that childbirth is the worst type of pain you could feel, after all you are pushing an entire human out of your body but one study suggests this is only the second worst pain you could feel.

So what takes the top spot? Could it be tooth ache, a bad back or breaking a bone? No.

In 2020 a study published in the Headache Journal ranked the worst type of pain people can experience as cluster headaches.

According to the NHS, cluster headaches are 'severe headaches that can happen multiple times a day and continue for weeks or months.

The official website says: "They may stop for a while (weeks, months or years) or there may be no gap between headaches."

Symptoms include:

• a sharp, burning or piercing pain, usually on one side of the head, around the eye
• headaches that happen at the same time of year or at set times of the day
• headaches that start and stop quickly, without warning
• pain that can make you feel restless, you may want to walk around or move your body
• headaches that last between 15 minutes and three hours

According to Brain Research UK, an estimated 65,000 people in the UK live with cluster headaches with the condition affecting approximately one in 1000 people.

The American researchers came to the conclusion that cluster headaches were more painful than childbirth, a stab wound and pancreatitis after asking 1,604 people who experienced cluster headaches to rank the amount of pain they endured during an attack against other agonising conditions.

Participants had to give a pain rating for each condition on a scale of 0 to 10 with anything above a seven categorised as 'severe pain'.

Cluster headaches ranked an average pain score of 9.7 out of 10 while labour pain was rated 7.2.

Coming in third was Pancreatitis - a condition where the pancreas becomes inflamed (swollen) over a short period of time - which scored 7.

A gunshot wound came surprisingly down in sixth place while a heart attack was down in 11th and a stab wound 13th on the list.

Researchers did acknowledge there were a number of limitations to their study, including that participants may not be able to accurately recall just how painful these conditions were.

However, they did conclude that 'cluster headache is reported by a large group of international respondents to be more intense than every other pain disorder examined'.