Some of you will not know what this headline means.
For some people, sufficiently hot water will, for a moment, feel ice cold.
If youre reading this at a desk, you probably have a pen handy.
Pick different spots to press the pen tip against.
The metal will feel cold at some points.
Youve just mapped out some of the nerve endings on your skin.
These nerves feel different sensations, but they all go up towards the brain using the spinothalamic tract.
For the most part the nerves can handle anything you throw at them.
The nerves that detect heat will remain dormant when exposed to cold.
Neither is overworked or overwhelmed in your everyday life until you stick your hand under something really really hot.
When you stick your hand into something incredibly hot theres something of stampede that part of your nervous system.
The nervous system pulls this kind of thing on us all the time.
We withdraw our hands from the scalding water as quickly as we do because of the reflex arc.
Paradoxical cold, as the sensation of cold because of heat is called, is balanced by paradoxical heat.
I often feel either sensation as a strange simultaneous hot-cold mix.
Have you felt paradoxical cold or heat?
[ViaBen Biggs,Mental Floss,Naked Scientists.]
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