"The drive to seek pleasure is crucial for our species and key to our survival." "Falling in love." "Physical attraction, and the continuation of humanity, all depend on pleasure." "Respect!" "In this programme, I'm going to try and unravel the science behind our reward system and find out what really gives us pleasure." "Sometimes you just have to give into temptation." "I have to do it?" "You have to do it, for sure." "I'll also reveal surprises about pain." "This is the knife I used to cut my arm off." "But sometimes the boundaries blur." "Their pain is going to be your pleasure." "There's a certain amount of anticipation going on here." "Ooh." "So what happens if these basic tools for life fail us?" "When you tell them our daughter doesn't feel pain, they don't believe you." "I'm living on the verge of an orgasm. 24 hours." "We reveal new research which shows how closely entwined pleasure and pain are in our brains." "And I try to turn something that I find absolutely terrifying into the greatest thrill of my life." "Oh, God." "I'm not sure I can do it." "Pleasure is all about the moment." "It could be triggered by a physical sensation, like a lover's touch or by a big emotional event, like the birth of a child." "We get pleasure from simple everyday things, like that first early morning cup of coffee." "Also from more unusual things, like rolling down a hill in a giant plastic ball." "Oh, wow!" "Now pleasure isn't all about fun." "Woo!" "If we didn't find it pleasurable, then we wouldn't make friends, we wouldn't eat and we wouldn't have sex." "So goodbye, Homo sapiens." "Woah, back in to the world again." "That was very, very funny." "As you can see, the pursuit of pleasure is a really serious business." "SHRIEKING" "There's been a lot of research into the biochemistry of pleasure, but surprisingly little into what gives us pleasure." "So we took to the streets with our pleasure questionnaire to try and compile your pleasure list." "OK." "What would you say gives you the most pleasure in life?" "Ah, that's an easy one." "We travelled high and low to find out what single thing gives you the most pleasure." "I've thought long and hard and I think I know what mine is." "But I'm not going to reveal it just yet, because I want to see if anything I'm about to experience persuades me to change my mind." "I've come to Switzerland to see if it's possible to overcome one of my greatest fears and get pleasure." "Behind me is the Verzasca dam." "It is 220 metres from the top to the bottom and in a moment, I'm going to jump from there." "Now I know there are people who get intense pleasure from doing this, what I don't know is if I'm one of them." "The Verzasca dam sits on Lake Vogorno and is the site of the highest bungee jump in Europe." "James Bond dived off it in GoldenEye and pleasure seekers come here from all over the world to experience the joy of the jump." "Yes!" "I'm clinging desperately to the hope that it's not going to be quite as awful as I think it's going to be." "Also to the hope that I'm actually going to do it, because there is the possibility that terror will prevent me jumping and I will be utterly humiliated in front of all these ghouls who are gathered here." "So what is it about extreme activities that people like so much?" "You just have to go." "You're losing everything and now its happening and you're just flying." "How was it then?" "Absolutely amazing." "Any terror in there?" "No, no." "A little bit of anticipation at the start but generally, I'll be fine like that now." "Oh, God." "Was it pleasurable?" "Yes, it was super." "So cool." "The craziest thing I ever done." "You have to do it." "I have to do it?" "You have to do it, for sure." "Whether or not we perceive something as being pleasurable depends on a series of complicated interactions that are going on inside our brains." "First to be discovered was the dopamine system, which controls wants and desires." "The dopamine system is so important that if you block it in rats they will stop eating and will starve to death." "Equally important is the opioid system, which tells us when we like something." "Here we feel euphoria and joy." "Go!" "And then there is the orbitofrontal cortex, which decides how much you really like something." "It balances risk against reward." "But these very same sites are also areas where we can perceive pain." "Yo!" "The interplay of all these complicated neuro-transmitters in the brain helps explain why one person's pleasure is another person's pain." "And a big smile." "This is signal for us to clear." "OK, so." "So now you're ready for the jump." "Thank you." "Do people ever refuse to jump when they get there?" "One out of a hundred..." "OK." "I could be that one." "..and not only the girls." "Not just the girls, right." "I don't know how I'm going to feel until I actually stand on that platform and stare down into the dreadful abyss." "It could be wonderful, it could be absolutely terrible." "I can't help thinking there cannot be that many people who's idea of a good time or way to get the pleasure most out of life is to stand on the edge of a dam like this and then jump off." "Whoa." "This is flight 453 to Barcelona, cruising at 35,000 feet." "It's filled with a typical range of tourists, and seems like a suitable place to find out just how enthusiastic other people are about jumping from a great height." "We're asking them which they would prefer - champagne and chocolates or the chance to jump out of the plane." "The red card is for the jump and the yellow is for bubbly and chocs." "I am rather surprised." "91 passengers went for the riskier jump option." "However, the clear majority, 149, opted for the chocolates." "Our pleasure questionnaire also threw up a surprising range of answers." "When a candle's melted and then you put your finger in it and it goes all hard, I love that." "What do I get pleasure from?" "Well, selling eggs." "I absolutely adore selling eggs." "Going to church, wherever I go and praising the Lord." "Celtic winning the cup." "I think my bike actually gives me the most pleasure." "Bowling." "I'd probably have to go with the gym." "What gives you the most pleasure?" "It has to be food, but especially chocolate." "Chocolate, every day." "Sometimes for breakfast." "Chocolate." "I really love chocolate." "Not surprisingly, chocolate scored high on your pleasure list." "It wasn't what I wrote down, but I do adore it and it's in my top ten." "To find out more, I've come to meet chocolate maker, Chantal Coady." "Why do you think people are so addicted to chocolate?" "Why do you think it hits the pleasure centres so satisfactorily?" "Well, d'you know, I have a theory that when you're a small baby and you have your mother's milk," "I think there's something very close in the taste and the way it feels in the mouth to white chocolate." "You're putting me off now, I have to say." "I'm thinking my mother's milk." "This is not necessarily selling this chocolate!" "I think chocolate is one of those foods that appeals to the caveman in all of us." "It's got fat and sugar." "It melts just below blood temperature, it's a uniquely sensual food." "When you put it on the tongue and allow it to melt, it rises up and you get all the wonderful sensations of flavour coming through into your nose and then obviously it gets the brain synapses snapping." "It is a fantastically sort of primal thing that as human beings, we all crave that sort of experience." "Chantal's handmade chocolates taste wonderful but for what I'm about to do, I need quantity, not quality." "I'm going to eat as much chocolate as I can to illustrate one of the most important rules of pleasure." "Pleasure is a short-term reward for doing what your body wants." "At the moment I think my body wants me to eat chocolate." "And I do like chocolate." "I like it a lot." "The way it melts in your mouth, it's all that...fat, and sugar, and sort of delicious melting package." "There's also something slightly illicit about it." "That's why it's a guilty pleasure." "The orbitofrontal cortex, which is the bit of my brain behind my eye sockets up here, is the part that tells me how much I like something." "For example, at the moment it's probably telling me I like chocolate." "But it also tells you the moment when you've had enough." "This same eat-as-much-chocolate-as you-can experiment was done by a bunch of volunteers inside a brain scanner." "The instant the participants said they'd had enough, activity in the OFC changed, moving from the centre to the outside." "This showed the moment enjoyment turned to revulsion." "It's this reaction that gives pleasure its defining feature." "Transience." "So, what happens if you over-ride your pleasure circuit and ignore the fact that pleasure is not designed to last for ever?" "Well, pleasure turns to pain." "I've probably eaten as much chocolate in that one sitting as I would normally eat in a couple of months." "I cannot imagine I will ever get pleasure from chocolate again." "Oh, God, no." "Over half the population in the UK is overweight and part of the problem is, people go on eating long after they have ceased getting pleasure." "The switching off of pleasure is an important signal and we ignore it at our peril." "With some foods, the switch between pleasure and pain is more complex." "I've come to the Hove Chilli Festival to find out more." "Come and get your colon cleaner, people!" "Dr Anupam Bhattacharjee studies capsaicin, the compound that makes chilli hot." "He's about to introduce me to the joys of chilli jam, chilli coffee and even chilli ice cream." "OK, one two three, go." "It's like vanilla, and then it's not like vanilla." "Ah, wow." "Oh, yes." "Take it easy, sir." "You OK?" "Yeah." "It hits the back of the throat." "I probably had more than you." "It's really weird cos it's got the soft vanilla ice cream taste and then the chilli kicks in." "If you imagine it neat, you'd be on the floor." "Had you ever had it neat?" "Yeah." "And I was on the floor, crying." "There are over 400 types of chilli ranging from the mildly spicy to very, very hot." "This is called a naga chilli." "It's grown in north-eastern India and it's the hottest chilli known to man." "So the seeds of this fruit contain a chemical called capsaicin and capsaicin has the ability to activate a particular receptor we have on our sensory nerve fibres." "And the wiring up in our brain is going to the same place that thinks that actually our tongue is burning when we're eating it." "So if I bite into this it would feel similar to a red hot iron on my tongue, would it?" "Yes." "Maybe I won't try that!" "So, why do we put ourselves through something which on the surface would seem to be just painful?" "There are anecdotal reports that people actually get a proper high from eating chillis." "Our brains have the ability to release chemicals when we are in pain, called endorphins, and I suppose it's probably the same thing." "My mouth is burning when I eat the chilli." "My brain probably releases these chemicals." "Have you ever had a high?" "I've never actually had a high." "I've got a kick out of it but never a high." "Someone who claims to get regular highs from capsaicin is Chilli Pepper Pete, who grows his own naga chillis." "Initially you eat it and it hits you hard, hard, but then it gradually lessens off as the endorphins kick in and eventually you're getting a rolling high." "No other chilli does it in the same way as the naga." "What's the euphoria like then?" "You get a rush." "You get woosh!" "Like whooooaa?" "Well, maybe not quite as big as that." "How long does that last for?" "With the naga it can last up to about half an hour for naga virgins." "Pain is good." "Oh, my gosh, pain is good!" "The highlight of the festival is the chilli eating competition." "The crowd are gathering here." "Quite a big one." "I'm feeling a bit apprehensive." "I don't know how far I'm going to go in this competition." "I don't expect to win it." "Michael Mosley!" "The chillis start off mild and go up in heat until the final round - the dreaded naga." "So, will anyone get the naga high, or will it just be pure pain?" "Their pain is going to be your pleasure." "OK, hold your chilli in the air." "Three, two, one, chew!" "It's OK, isn't it?" "You have to eat all the fruit." "Obviously not the stalk." "You won't see it yet but you'll soon see people's faces get red." "Severe cramps is one of the conditions." "Next we've got Dutch finger chillies." "We're going to go up with the heat now." "About 1,500 Scovilles." "Oh dear..." "So we are increasing." "They will notice the heat." "OK, we've all got a chilli?" "Audience!" "Three, two, one, chew!" "The next chilli was three times hotter." "How you doing?" "This is one extreme way to make sure you get your five a day." "How are you doing?" "I've been better." "He's been better." "It's going to get worse." "Hold your stalks up to show that you've finished." "Give them a round of applause." "CHEERING" "Darth will now be handing out bullet chillis." "Three, two, one, chew!" "Can you see?" "Only three chillis in and my amateur status became very clear." "I have hit my limit." "I'm finishing." "CROWD BOOS" "Don't boo him!" "Some like it hot, but it seems I'm not one of them." "Respect!" "Are you bowing out as well?" "Another round of applause, please." "You see, two of them bit the bullet." "Sadly I was the first out." "I suspect those others are more hardened chilli eaters because none of them turned a hair." "Even on the last one." "The last one I had tears streaming down my face and it just hurt." "And I'm hoping the euphoria is going to kick in, but so far nothing." "I was disappointed to drop out so early, until I saw what happened to some of the other contestants." "I'm much, much happier I'm here than I'm over there." "Because I faded out about a thousand times less hot than what they are about to eat now, the naga, which is the hottest chilli on the planet." "So, if they can swallow that they deserve an awful lot of respect." "The naga begins to have an effect, and so far no-one looks like they are getting any chilli euphoria." "The prospect of eating another proves too much for most of them." "Finally, a winner." "She looks remarkably happy considering what she's just eaten." "Maybe that's what a naga high looks like." "I don't think chillis are ever going to be right at the top of my pleasure list." "But when we asked the nation what gave them the single greatest pleasure, one answer did come up an awful lot." "What gives, or has given you, the most pleasure?" "Out of anything?" "Sex." "Well, I like a physical one." "You know, with a female." "A physical with a female?" "I really do like that." "It gives me good pleasure." "Sex." "I'm gonna have to say sex." "Sex, I suppose!" "Sex." "Sex, yeah." "Sex." "Yeah, without a doubt." "Sexual desire makes the world a more beautiful, a more intense place." "The desire for sex has to be strong because we need to reproduce, but it's more than that." "Out there in the wild, finding a mate can be difficult, if not downright dangerous." "That's why the sexual drive has to be absolutely irresistible." "When we engage in sexual activity, one of the first things that happens is, sensors in the skin send messages to the cerebral cortex." "The brain then releases increasing amounts of dopamine, the chemical of desire." "The heart starts to beat faster, increasing the flow of blood to the skin and genitals." "As dopamine levels reach their peak, the brain releases a massive dose of endorphins, creating a feeling of immense pleasure and euphoria." "All focus is channelled to the end goal - the orgasm." "After orgasm, the brain releases serotonin and prolactin, which trigger a fall in dopamine, telling us we've had enough." "Desire fades and we are left hopefully fulfilled, and just a little bit sleepy." "Orgasms can be amongst the most intensely pleasurable of experiences but even so, I don't think most people would want their lives utterly dominated by them." "A properly functioning pleasure system should encourage even the most dedicated of Casanovas to seek a range of pleasures." "But what if you don't have a choice?" "Johanna suffers from a rare condition which demonstrates graphically what happens when the pleasure of orgasm goes wrong." "It started about six and a half years ago." "I welcomed it at first because I'm an old lady and I wasn't very sexual before that time, so I welcomed it because it wasn't always there." "But within a period of three months the symptoms were 24 hours a day, and I realised something was wrong." "It feels like being on the verge of an orgasm." "It's like someone with a remote control pushed the freeze button." "That's the feeling." "I felt disgusting." "I was ashamed about those feelings, on which I responded with masturbation, because I wanted to get rid of the feeling." "I needed to get rid of that feeling." "It was making me crazy." "Johanna lives in Holland, one of the few places where doctors study and treat her condition," "Restless Genital Syndrome, or REGS." "Professor Marcel Waldinger thinks he has finally identified the cause." "Restless Genital Syndrome is not at all emotional." "It's a neurological disorder." "It is a very small nerve called the dorsal nerve of the clitoris." "The DNC." "The DNC is one of the main nerves associated with the female orgasm." "For some reason in women who suffer from REGS, this nerve is constantly stimulated, convincing the body it is about to have an orgasm." "These feelings are always there and sometimes the intensity is so high that I'm not able to concentrate on anything else." "I'm afraid to engage in new relationships because of my experience." "I choose to live a life of isolation." "They get very agitated, often desperate." "A small part is even suicidal." "There is no pleasure whatsoever in orgasm." "It's only a short moment of relief followed by the same feeling as before, or even worse." "People think that it is very pleasurable, but it is terrible for these women." "So there's really nothing pleasurable in having REGS." "It is a disaster for the women." "It is so difficult to explain that something that is taking place in your genital area is not sexual." "But it is not sexual." "Most of us are fortunate enough that we still get pleasure from sex." "In fact, it was the second most common answer in our pleasure questionnaire." "But we also asked people, what thing gives you the most pain?" "Getting diabetes." "When I had the heart attack." "Breaking my ankle." "The most pain..." "Probably epilating." "Although many talked about physical pain, emotional pain was by far the most common answer." "I went out with a girl and she broke my heart." "That's the worst pain." "It's love gone wrong." "He's died, my husband." "He's been dead 26 years." "But I still feel pain over his death." "I never got over it, really." "I think heartache more than physical pain is the greatest pain of all." "Losing somebody you are deeply in love with, whether through bereavement or perhaps the breakdown of a relationship, can be one of the most painful things you ever experience." "But most of us always come back for more." "We love being in love." "So what is it about love that gives us such intense pleasure?" "# Love is in the air" "# Everywhere I look around... #" "Every year in the UK, nearly half a million people declare their undying love and get married." "Linda Geddes and Nick Fleming's wedding was a traditional affair." "The bride looked radiant, the groom looked nervous, and the guests of honour were a neuroscientist and a laboratory centrifuge." "Linda writes for the New Scientist and couldn't resist using her own wedding to measure the chemistry of love." "I first mentioned it to my fiance Nick, and his initial reaction was "Are you crazy?" ""What are you talking about, having an experiment at the wedding?"" "And I kind of said "Well, it seems a fun thing to do, and it's" ""interesting research, and we might find some interesting stuff out."" "I believe that you can explain a lot of the feelings you experience when you fall in love through chemistry and through an understanding of neuroscience and hormones, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not love, or take anything away" "from the fact that love is this amazing thing." "How's my hair?" "Oxytocin is a key hormone associated with romantic love." "Linda and Nick bravely decided to measure how much they produced on their wedding day." "It's also vital in forming strong social bonds, so everyone gave a blood sample before and after the ceremony." "We had one friend who's a doctor and another who's a nurse who kindly volunteered to take the blood samples." "They came up to my bridal suite about three quarters of an hour before the actual ceremony." "You're a superstar!" "Did you not feel that?" "No." "Then everyone else had their blood taken downstairs in a dining room which had been turned into a makeshift lab." "Oxytocin expert Professor Paul Zak came all the way from California to run the experiment." "That's beautiful plasma." "I remember seeing my dad waiting for me and he had tears in his eyes." "And I just welled up then and suddenly had this massive surge of emotion." "And then obviously I saw all my friends, and saw Nick there and I felt very excited and happy, but also quite tearful." "It's a big thing, getting married." "It gives me very great pleasure to tell you you are now husband and wife." "You may kiss your wife." "Immediately after the ceremony, we all had to go for the second blood draw." "One of the things about oxytocin is that it only has a very short half-life, so you have to collect it quickly as possible after, because otherwise you won't get a correct reading." "What we saw was what hoped we'd see, which was that we got the biggest rise in oxytocin in myself and Nick, my husband, and the next biggest rise came in our close family, my mum, Nick's dad, Nick's brother," "which is kind of preliminary proof that oxytocin is involved in this empathy reaction, this group love." "The chemistry of love is immensely complicated but it always involves oxytocin, and not just in romantic love." "I'm going somewhere where levels of oxytocin should be absolutely through the roof." "Many people in our questionnaire said having a child was their greatest pleasure." "The huge amounts of oxytocin released in the bodies of babies and their parents helps produce the overwhelming and giddy pleasure common to maternity wards." "You feel completely loved up." "You do." "Not just towards the baby, but to your partner." "It's all love, that's what it is." "Have you heard of oxytocin?" "It's a chemical that's produced when you feel love." "So you're probably absolutely awash with it at the moment." "I imagine it's surging round your system." "Newborn babies need protecting, which means it's vital that a strong bond develops." "Oxytocin helps form that bond." "They got me up to walk around and I didn't want to leave him in here, but they assured me he'd be OK." "And then as soon as I got back in the room with him, I just grabbed him." "I haven't really put him down much since." "What the research shows is, he's got the same thing going on in him." "The oxytocin is being produced." "He's feeling the same love, that's bonding him to you." "That's lovely to know." "So, I think he gets a good spurt of pleasure every time he hears your voice." "Oh, that's good." "He's fast asleep now." "That's the best stage." "Yes." "The immense pleasure we get from having a baby is nature's way of rewarding us for continuing life." "I think for dads, it takes a while to think that you want a baby." "And then when you have one, the first one, like this morning I was thinking "We should go for another one"." "It's something I never thought about before." "Just at that moment!" "Then you end up with four!" "He's got the oxytocin spike in him as well." "Love is in the air!" "Oxytocin is vital for producing those waves of love that parents feel for their newborn children." "But of course, before they get the pleasure, mothers-to-be have to put up with an awful lot of this." "Come on, push down." "Down, down..." "Many people believe that childbirth is the most painful experience of all, but the nature of pain makes that difficult to prove." "Pain is really hard to measure." "For starters, it's subjective." "How do you compare one person's painful experience with another's?" "It's also incredibly dependent on context." "I've come to explore a world of pain I wouldn't usually enter at the workplace of someone who is very practised at inflicting it." "Ooooh!" "Pain is always experienced in the brain." "Haah!" "When the wax is being put on my leg and hairs are being... ripped out, the messages go up to my brain and they go "Ow!" "That hurt."" "There's a certain amount of anticipation going on here." "There are parts of my brain which actually control my higher-level perception of pain." "And they take into account factors like the context I'm in, the environment, what is happening, why it's happening, and also how I feel about what's happening." "Do you get many guys doing this?" "A lot." "Really?" "What bits do they like having waxed most?" "Probably their chests more." "I thought hairy chests were sexy." "No?" "It depends!" "Depends on the bloke, yeah." "It depends on what people like." "Yes." "Do you think my legs look sexier now?" "Be honest." "No, not in your case!" "Dread plays an important part in pain." "Recent studies have shown that... when you anticipate pain happening, it activates the same part of the brain as the pain itself." "There are some people called extreme dreaders." "Here we go." "Oooh!" "The actual anticipation is worse than the experience." "Blimey, look at all that hair." "It's ugly, isn't it?" "Ooh, no, not nice." "Research shows that how we perceive pain and how much also depends on whether we think it's being maliciously inflicted." "So a nice, pleasant bedside manner like Twinkie has is not just polite, it is also good practice." "You're not being malicious, are you, Twinkie?" "Not at all, no." "Ow!" "Reward also plays a big part in how much pain...ooh....how much pain we perceive." "Brain chemicals like dopamine control not just reward, but they also appear to inhibit our pain recept...our pain receptors." "Having hair-free legs was never a priority, so I have to say this is not rewarding, and therefore it's actually quite painful." "It's not helping, Twinkie." "I don't feel rewarded." "Not at all?" "No." "It's not an improvement, is it?" "Let's be honest." "I'm not convinced." "Let's do your chest!" "Sampson Parker has a farm in South Carolina." "In 2007 he had to inflict excruciating pain on himself for the greatest possible reward - life." "He was out working when his corn picker became blocked." "I left the tractor running, and I walked back around the corn picker." "There was a corn stalk stuck, and without thinking I reached my arm into the corn picker and grabbed a hold of the corn stalk and pulled down, and the corn stalk wouldn't come out." "And then I pushed up, and when I pushed up... the rollers that take the shucks off the corn grabbed my hand." "My hand was stuck." "Blood started coming down my arm and chunks of meat and everything." "And I couldn't believe what had just happened." "I knew I was in trouble, but I had to block the pain out of my brain." "I knew I had somehow to get the machine to stop." "I took this pin, I was able to get it out." "My arm was still in here." "I took this pin out and reached around the side and was able to jam it between this chain and the tyre, stopping the machine." "I then grabbed hold of my arm, thinking all I had to do was pull my hand free." "I physically tried to pull my hand off." "I put my knees up against here and leaned back and pulled as hard as I could, and I couldn't do it." "My hand was still stuck." "With the machine being jammed, the slip clutch on the side was throwing sparks." "Of course with sparks and dry corn shucks, it only took about ten seconds, and all the corn shucks were on fire." "Inside here, which was still about half full of corn shucks, it was burning." "My arm that was stuck in here started burning, and I could see my skin melting like plastic." "Sampson faced a terrible choice." "Die, or cut off his own arm." "I'd been been fighting this machine for an hour and a half and it wasn't going to beat me." "I cried out to God to help me." "I didn't want my family to come down here on the farm and see me burnt to death behind this corn picker." "Without thinking, I reached back, grabbed a hold of my pocket knife, took the knife and jammed it into the forearm." "And with everything so far, the burning, the hand caught, that was painful." "But when I jammed that knife into my arm and starting cutting away the meat, I was screaming." "Cutting those nerves in my arm hurt." "I can't explain how it felt." "The tyre on the side of the machine was burning and the wind was blowing the flames into my face." "My hair was starting to burn." "And I started trying to cut the bone." "I only messed with it for a couple of seconds cos the tyre was like a torch." "And to break the bone I raised up as high as I could like this, and then I dropped to the ground, hitting this sharp sheet metal, snapping the bone." "When that happened, the tyre on the side of the machine exploded and that was like someone smacked me in the face," "And it blew me back away from the machine about five feet on my back." "And I'll never forget, I jumped up with blood shooting out the end of my arm." "I jumped up, ran round to my truck, thinking "I'm free, I'm free!"" "Despite massive blood loss," "Sampson made his way to the nearest road where he was picked up, rushed to hospital and spent the next month recovering." "He believes he fought so hard to survive because of his love for Leanne, his wife of 22 years." "The pain that Sampson must have endured is really beyond my imagination." "I can't imagine anyone doing what he did." "Even though I know that Sampson is a remarkable person and if he's determined to do something, he follows through and does it, but to me that's the unimaginable." "Pain was probably my least concern at the time." "And I was going to do whatever it took to get free." "Sampson's story shows there are people who can cope with extraordinary amounts of pain." "But would we all be able to do what he did?" "Are some people more naturally sensitive to pain than others?" "It's a question people have strong opinions about, particularly when it comes to men versus women." "I would assume that women have a higher pain tolerance than men." "I think men don't like to show it as much." "Probably women." "We'll go with women." "Women because they give birth, and surely that's a really painful thing to do." "There's lot more competitive spirit amongst men." "That's how they cope with pain." "I've come to St Andrews in Scotland to try and find out who copes with pain better." "St Andrews is famous for its university and golf club but it's also an excellent location for a cold water immersion pain test, thanks to the fact that the average water temperature for this time of year is a chilly six degrees centigrade." "It may look like a beautifully sunny day, but I can assure you... ..that water is freezing and I think it's going to be very...argh!" "Argh!" "Agh..." "Agh!" "O-o-ow!" "Very, very painful." "But it's also very, very cold." "Oddly enough, if it were a bit colder, it wouldn't feel cold because below about three degrees the pain receptors completely overwhelm your temperature receptors so you wouldn't be able to tell whether you were standing in freezing water or boiling water." "Now, if I lower myself a bit..." "O-o-ooh!" "What happens is that the blood vessels all constrict and my blood pressure is probably shooting up around now as my body desperately tries to conserve heat and it is getting both incredibly painful and numb at the same time," "so it's probably time to come out." "It's definitely time to come out." "God..." "Right now, I can't really feel anything in my feet." "They are completely numb, they are red." "Cold is a really good way of inducing pain." "I'm going to go and get changed." "We've enrolled a number of volunteers to take part in our test." "It's pretty straightforward." "Who can tolerate the pain of cold water the longest?" "We've got a group of men and a group of women, but we're also looking at other factors that might affect our ability to tolerate pain." "We've recruited some redheads." "'The gene that makes them ginger also makes them more sensitive to pain.'" "I'm predicting you're going to do badly." "How do you feel you will do?" "I think we're going to rock it!" "You're going to rock?" "Yeah." "'A happily married couple - 'the neuro-chemicals we release when we are in love 'may protect us against pain.'" "Does that sound plausible?" "We will feel no pain." "Well used to it." "We will see whether your love keeps you warm." "There's even a theory that rampant swearing can raise pain tolerance, so we've asked some university students to demonstrate their range of bad language." "Hello, the swearers." "You should greet me with great big curses." "You bastard!" "Have you got some words prepared?" "BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP...monkey..." "OK." "I look forward to hearing some of these swear words." "Whole new words that perhaps I've never heard before." "Great." "As you know, you're here because you want to experience pain." "And the plan is that it's going to be cold water immersion pain." "GROANING" "Now, the good news is I'm not going to ask you to dip in to the sea." "CHEERING" "But I'm going to ask you to experience something almost certainly as painful." "CHEERING" "Each volunteer is given a bucket full of iced water at a temperature between two and three degrees." "No tonic for me, thanks..." "This is a standard pain tolerance test." "Water, ice." "It is safer, it is more effective, but it can be also much more painful, because unlike being in the water, there's nothing to distract me." "All I can think of is the pain." "That is painful." "Really, very painful." "We're also blindfolding the group to minimise peer pressure." "You'll keep your right hand as long as you can in that bucket." "When you can no longer bear it, remove it, stick your spade up so we know you have stopped." "OK?" "Ready, steady, go!" "Less than ten seconds in, and the women are already one down." "The redheads are standing firm and the men seem totally unfazed." "Well, nearly all the men." "Another woman down, and we're only two minutes in." "BLEEP, BLEEP..." "BLEEP!" "The swearers are enthusiastically testing the theory." "But it's not working for all of them." "Four minutes in and two of the redheads have given up." "Perhaps they really do feel pain more." "Our macho men are pretending to have a good time." "But over in the women's group, another one bites the dust." "At five minutes, our first man has had enough." "It's unlikely anyone is still feeling the cold." "All they'll be feeling is pain." "Did the swearing help?" "Argh!" "'The swearers are the first entire group to give up.'" "I have to say, you were the group who disappointed me in the sense that swearing didn't help." "No, not at all." "I wanted to be silent cos it helped me concentrate more." "Oh, so swearing distracts you?" "I have to say the redheads are doing well, and whatever love is, love is the answer, obviously, because these two are very stoical and they're doing extraordinarily well over there." "They've had their hands in the bucket for nearly 12 minutes and more men are showing signs of cracking." "You did very well." "How was it?" "Bad?" "Really." "Yeah." "'Not all the women have given up.'" "Bit of a shake going on there?" "I suppose the shivering makes it difficult holding the bucket." "You're doing remarkably well." "We don't mind putting our volunteers through pain but we don't want to cause any long term damage so although they don't know it yet, the test is about to end at 15 minutes." "HOOTER SOUNDS" "Well done, everyone." "You can take your hands out of the buckets now." "CHEERING" "Ouch!" "Thank you very much." "Well done, gang." "We have results." "Now, I'm afraid the swearers were a disappointment to me." "The swearing didn't work." "You dropped out rather fast." "The lovers, you were phenomenal." "You kept going till the end." "The redheads defied expectations and many lasted till the end." "But the real purpose of this test was to see whether men or women tolerate pain better and the result was quite unambiguous." "Of the women, only one was still standing, and that was Pamela." "Whereas, the guys, seven were still going at the end of 15 minutes." "CHEERING" "So, when it comes to tolerating pain, blokes do it better." "I was the first one out... and I'm proud of it." "I don't think we did as well as the other groups." "The redheads had a point to prove so they were going for it." "Redheads can take pain, and I'm proud of our group." "We did really well." "I'm a wuss." "That's pretty much it." "These guys clearly aren't, but I am." "I wussed out pretty early." "It hurt, OK?" "This wasn't a proper rigorous science experiment but the results here do replicate what's been found elsewhere." "That in these sort of tests, men tend to do better than women." "Now, there was clearly an element of bravado but there also appear to be real biological differences." "For example, women do experience more chronic pain, and men, for some reason, respond better and faster to pain killers like paracetamol." "Suffering now!" "Can't believe you just put your hand in a bucket of water and it can be that sore." "If pain is so unpleasant, wouldn't we be better off without it?" "Patterson is a sleepy town in south Georgia." "By spring, temperatures here reach the 90s, and for ten-year-old Ashlyn Blocker, the best place to be is in the pool." "Ashlyn, get down now." "No!" "Excuse you." "'She's not afraid of falling or anything like that, for sure.'" "You can tell by the way she walks, runs, everything, how rough she is on her ankles or joints." "Be careful getting out of the pool, girl, OK?" "Other families probably would let their child go and just have fun." "But it seems like we're always having to keep our eyes glued on her." "John and Tara have to worry that Ashlyn will hurt herself." "She has no way of telling." "Ashlyn's condition is called congenital insensitivity to pain." "What that means is that her brain doesn't respond to any pain stimuli." "She doesn't know when she hurts herself." "It's very challenging to teach someone who can't feel pain the safeguards of life." "It's a very long process." "Ashlyn was diagnosed when she was six months old." "Her parents noticed she'd begun to mutilate her hands and face." "When I was little I chewed my hands." "This is how I got the marks." "I ripped the skin off." "From there she started biting more." "Her fingers, her wrists." "She started chewing on her lips and her tongue in sleep." "I was constantly taking her fingers away from her face and we'd wrap her hands up with athletic tape to let her injuries that she had done to her hands heal and prevent more from happening." "Despite her parents' vigilance, regular injuries are part of Ashlyn's childhood." "The burn on her hand was pretty severe." "She touched a hot pressure washer motor when she was two." "From fingertip to the palm, it was just burned." "My hands were blisters." "Big ones right in the middle." "So we had to go to the hospital." "She would look at her hand and basically play with it." "It was amazing how she didn't even care." "She can tell hot and cold, but she can't tell the extremes." "If it's too hot or too cold." "It's hard." "We have a lot of things that we've learned to do for 11 years." "Keeping a close watch on her, learning to look from head to toe." "Every day, when Ashlyn gets home from school she gets a full body check." "It looks all the same to me." "It sure does." "A lot of people you talk to, you know, their automatic first instinct is like," ""Wow, what a great thing not to feel pain, that would be awesome," or whatever." "But, you know, pain is there for a reason." "It tells our body something's wrong." "Not only do we get help or medical attention, it's part of the healing process too." "Pain keeps us safe." "It tells the body its limits." "It gives them their boundaries to let them know, "OK, I can't go and do that again." ""I've got to remember not to do that again."" "It's just hard cos she doesn't have that." "Acute pain is essential for survival, but chronic pain, long-term pain, is the most common reason for going to the doctor." "And when we get there, what we expect to be prescribed are some of these." "Drugs." "Last year nearly 16 million prescriptions were written for powerful opiates like morphine." "In addition, we bought 290 million packets of over the counter pain killers, many of which contain codeine, a milder opiate." "Opiates work by changing how our brain perceives pain but they can also stimulate the pleasure centres, producing an intense feeling of euphoria." "The trouble is, if you flood your system with opiate drugs, they can desensitize the pleasure centres to the point at which you feel no pleasure at all." "Addicts who start using drugs to induce pleasure end up using them to prevent pain." "Fortunately there are other, more subtle ways to achieve that instant hit." "This is Edinburgh." "According to a recent demographic study, it is home to the most miserable people in Britain." "This is a good city to come to on a pretty miserable day to try out an intriguing idea." "Can I give the people of Edinburgh a little hit of pleasure, no drugs, nothing illicit, simply by using a pencil?" "How are you feeling today on a score of one to ten?" "Oh, about five." "Would you like me to add a little pleasure to your day?" "Go for it!" "Put this between your teeth like this." "OK." " Is it doing anything for you?" " Not really, no." "It makes me feel a bit like a horse." "It's making me smile." "Good." "Is it meant to make us feel happier?" "It is, exactly." "What happens is, when you put a pencil in your mouth like this, it makes you smile." "You're exercising the same muscles as when you smile." "What's strange is that a fake smile like this one can induce a hit of real pleasure." "Is it beginning to kick in?" "Yes." "I think it's quite funny that I have a pencil in my mouth." "Does it make you feel good?" "Yeah, it does actually." "I'm smiling." "You're convinced?" "I'm worried about how many mouths these pencils have been in." "I can promise these are sterilised, clean pencils!" "I feel great." "It makes you laugh if nothing else." "Gone from a five to a..." "Oh, it's up to nine." "So what's going on?" "It could simply be that your brain has learned to associate smiling with pleasure, but there's another intriguing theory." "When I smile, I exercise the major zygomatic muscles." "They tighten up and that alters the blood flow to my brain." "And it could be it is that which is triggering the feeling of pleasure." "How you feeling now?" "You have amused me." "Well done." "Do you smile when you're not feeling happy?" "I try to." "Does that elevate your mood?" "I think so." "I think it makes you feel a lot better." "So, just by exercising these muscles, you can trick our brain into feeling pleasure." "To be honest, you don't even need one of these." "At the beginning of this programme," "I wrote down what I believe has brought me the most pleasure in my life." "Since then, I've experienced how inconsequential pleasure can be, eaten more chocolate than I thought feasible, and discovered I don't get much pleasure from hot chillies or smooth legs." "But there was one final thing I wanted to do." "Face me fears, and see what pleasure, if any, lay at the end of a long drop." "It's actually real now." "Hadn't been real until this moment." "Now it is real." "Oh, Jeez..." "You're going to stand on the yellow platform, take your toes over the edge a little bit, look straight forward up to this rock we give a count, three, two, one, go, and you jump head first as far out as you can." " OK." " And enjoy your jump." "Have a nice flight." "Right now, Michael." "Yes." "You're not Michael, you're Mr Bond." "Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay." "This is now for real." "Go to the very edge..." "Oh, Jeez." "Oh, this is terrifying." "This is absolutely terrifying." "Now, full power, Mr Michael." "Three, two, one, go!" "Argh!" "Argh!" "Argh!" "That was absolutely horrible." "Argh..." "Going upside down now is almost worse." "Argh!" "I can see the rocks." "I can feel my ankles." "I'm going up and down, and I'm waiting for a euphoric moment to kick in and it hasn't done so yet, I have to say." "I thought I could go down with my eyes open but actually it's much, much worse with your eyes open." "That was really..." "Just shaking with nerves." "Absolutely shaking." "My hands are moving." "Being upside down, waiting for the bungee to stop." "I didn't know if I could jump, I really didn't." "Woo!" "I feel my heart pacing and the hook is coming." "Now I'm feeling some sort of euphoric kick." "Was that pleasurable?" "I don't know." "It was an experience." "The worst moment of all, the really, really bad moment was standing on the edge and looking, and knowing I was going to have to do it and if I thought about it for more than five seconds," "which is what you were saying, you just wouldn't do it." "You look down and think, "I'm going to die." "This is so unnatural."" "There is a moment of wonderful euphoria when you do, and, at the moment, I'm profoundly glad I did it but I'm also profoundly glad I'm never doing it again." "There was a huge range of responses to our pleasure questionnaire, reflecting the fact that it's incredibly difficult to pin down a single thing that gives you the most pleasure." "Most of the responses, however, reflected basic human needs." "So, what were the most popular?" "Third was pleasure from food and drink." "Number two, sex." "But there was a clear winner." "Top of the list by a huge margin, family and loved ones." "And my answer?" "Despite everything I've learnt on my journey into pain and pleasure, my answer stays the same." "My wife, Clare." "Pleasure is often seen as something selfish, but I think the greatest pleasure of all comes from sharing." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"