Does losing a toenail hurt

Answer 1

This depends on method involved in actually loosing it.

If any nail get somehow caught and is ripped right out of its place then the chances are:

• If ripped out very fast, the nerve-endings registering pain will send such a massive signal that it gets blocked and it may not feel as pain at all for a short while. It will however start to become more and more painful after 30 seconds to a few minutes.
• If ripped out very slowly, then when enough pull is established and the fibers holding it in place are breaking then it will very quickly become intensely painful. This is the body's self preserving system telling you that something is about to happen and please make it stop.
• One can of course loose a nail due to something hitting it very hard. A hammer on a fingernail/thumb (carpenters) do this sometimes. Normally you would not lose the nail right away, but it will become bluish due to lesions of blood collecting underneath it. This will in time lead to the loss of the nail and is not painful, however the damage causing this to start happening can be quite intense. It depends on how well you managed to hit your nail. If hitting it really hard the chances are that nerve-signals to the brain will be blocked and the pain will gradually begin to form.

Do not worry though. In absolutely most cases a new nail will start to form and the lost nail will be fully replaced after a few months. This does however depends a bit on how badly the roots of the nail was damaged. Some times only part of the nail grows back out again.

The pain response is the method the body uses to tell you that something is going on that should not happen. It does not matter where the damage is happening. It will hurt on your toes as it would hurt on your fingers.

Pain is also a matter of perception. Some people can stand a lot and never takes painkillers. Others can watch a person hitting his thumb and "feel" the pain as it was his own, thereby going for painkillers :-)

If you are used to hitting your fingers, then you might not "feel" the pain as bad because you have felt it there so many times before. If you then hit your toe or get a damage elsewhere, the pain might feel quite a lot stronger because you are not used to the pain there.

There are also a few people around that does not actually feel pain at all.

We are all different.