Signals are picked up by sensory receptors in nerve endings in the damaged tissue. The nerves transmit the signals to the spinal cord, and then to the brain where the signals are interpreted as pain, which is often described as aching or throbbing.

A throbbing sensation is one symptom often associated with headaches, a common medical condition. When you develop a headache, blood rushes to the affected area of the head in an effort to remedy the problem. Throbbing results from the dilation of your blood vessels from the increased blood flow.

Bandage the Cut To reduce the risk of infection and help numb any pain or swelling that you may be starting to feel, apply a small amount of an antibacterial cream. After that’s applied, cover your wound with a sterile bandage. Make sure to clean the wound and replace the bandage daily.

The science behind the pain of paper cuts Your body has hundreds of nerves. These nerves are spread throughout your body, from head to toe. In your hands and fingers, though, the nerve endings are densely packed together. So, they’re more sensitive than other areas, like your back or arm.

In general, for a fingertip injury to grow back, the injury must occur beyond where the nail starts, and some deformity of the tip of the finger will generally persist. But hand surgeons have long known that a cut-off fingertip can regain much of the normal feel, shape, and appearance.

Finally, paper cuts are usually not deep enough to activate the body’s natural defence mechanisms – such as blood clotting and scabbing – so the damaged nerve endings in our fingers are left exposed. It’s much easier to feel both points the second time around because of the extra nerve endings.

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.

Scrapes are usually more painful than cuts because scrapes tear a larger area of skin and expose more nerve endings. How a scrape heals depends on the depth, size, and location of the scrape.

There are more nerve fibers (called nociceptors) per square inch in your fingertips than most other areas of your body. When you get a paper cut, the paper slices through these nerve fibers, resulting in many pain signals being sent to your brain.

Petroleum Jelly: Applying a layer of petroleum jelly over a paper cut will coat it to prevent irritants from entering it, and it will soothe the skin. Lip Balm: A wax-based lip balm will slow a paper cut’s bleeding and help relieve pain by preventing air from irritating open nerves.

The Healing Process Before healing begins, the body gears up to protect against infection. For the first few days, a wound may be swollen, red, and painful. This inflammation is a sign of the body’s immune system kicking in to protect the wound from infection.

“We know that the actin filaments are very important in allowing cells to move.” As a result of these changes, the fibroblasts travel to the site of the injury more slowly at night, when the actin is mostly spherical.

When you close your eyes and fall asleep, your brain can attend to other issues within the body. If there are areas that need to heal, the brain can trigger the release of hormones that encourage tissue growth to repair blood vessels. This helps wounds to heal faster but also restores sore or damaged muscles.

As Andy Coghlan at New Scientist reports, researchers have found that wounds sustained during the day heal twice as fast as those that occur at night. Whenever you are injured, a type of skin cell known as fibroblasts, move into the region to pave the way for new cells to grow.

These guidelines can help you care for minor cuts and scrapes:

• Wash your hands. This helps avoid infection.
• Stop the bleeding.
• Clean the wound.
• Apply an antibiotic or petroleum jelly.
• Cover the wound.
• Change the dressing.
• Get a tetanus shot.
• Watch for signs of infection.