- [Narrator] Years ago, I
remember a wasp stung me, and I sobbed for 5 whole minutes. But a wasp sting is nothing compared to the excruciating pain
that some poor people have been through. From eye surgery without anesthetic to a plant with a sting that
can torment you for years. I hope you never experience any of the agonizing afflictions
I'm about to show you. So, grit your teeth and brace yourself because it's time to learn about some of the most painful things
a human can ever experience. Stones 'n' Moans. Let's be real, peeing
usually feels pretty good. But what if the next time
you went to go pee-pee, you had to squeeze out a
load of big, hard stones from your nether-regions? Well, this isn't a nightmare but a horrifying reality
for one in ten of us. They're called kidney stones, and they form, you guessed
it, inside your kidneys. If you don't drink enough water, your urine will become darker and more concentrated with
your body's waste products. Keep this up, and calcium and
other minerals in your urine can crystallize and stick together. These crystalline formations
are kidney stones, and once they're inside your body, they're incredibly painful to get out. That's because although
they start in your kidney, they move around inside you and eventually pass down
through your ureter, a grueling process that doesn't end when the stones get to your bladder. Then you have to flush
them out of your pee hole, and this can be a whole lot worse. Sometimes, though, the stones
don't move through your body. Instead, they get stuck inside your kidney and collect there,
blocking the flow of urine and making the kidney swell up and bloat. One sufferer on Reddit described this pain as if someone had taken a steel javelin, heated it white hot,
rolled it in broken glass, and then thrust it into their back and twisted it around for hours. Yikes. And you wanna hear the craziest thing? The world record for the
most kidney stones removed from one person is a mind-blowing 172,155. Fortunately, they had surgery. If they'd had to pass them all naturally, I don't think there'd be anything
left of their pee shooter. Okay, I'm off to get a
glass of water right now. Grievous Gympie. The name "Gympie-Gympie" sounds
like a fun magical sprite from a fairy-tale you
read as a kid, doesn't it? Sadly, that couldn't be
further from the truth. Though the Gympie-Gympie plant looks like a fairly standard nettle. This Australian terror has a brutal sting that's been known to last weeks, months, and even years. Tiny hairs cover the plant all over, and the tip of each one
contains a powerful neurotoxin that, if touched, breaks off and sticks in the skin causing
severe, long lasting pain. At first, you feel an intense burning. This gets worse and worse
for about half an hour, and then can last
anywhere from a few hours to several days of sleep deprived agony. And if you're really unlucky, it can go on a whole lot longer. Ernie Rider, an Australian forester, found this out the hard way. One day back in 1963, Ernie
was working in some foliage when he made a big mistake; he got too close to the Gympie-Gympie. Never get too close to the Gympie-Gympie, even if it is weirdly fun to say. Ernie stood on the plant accidentally, and when he took his foot off, the branch swung up and smacked
him in the face and torso. Instantly, hot, searing
pain ten times worse than anything he'd ever felt
exploded across his body. It was unbearable. Ernie couldn't work or sleep for two days, and after he finally got some rest, the agony drew on for another fortnight. Even after that, it
didn't stop completely. In fact, the stinging
persisted for two whole years, recurring whenever he had a cold shower. Damn, cold showers are torturous enough without a punishing stinging pain. The Gympie-Gympie sounds
pretty painful, right? But you know what would hurt even more? Missing out on all the
exciting, informative videos I've got planned, so hit those
like and subscribe buttons down below and never miss out again. Right, where were we? Solder Eye. You know that itchy, uncomfortable feeling when you get an eyelash stuck in your eye? Horrible, isn't it? Now imagine that, but about
a million times worse. Reddit user "smartassguy"
used to be a plumber, when one day he and his boss were soldering some
copper pipes for a client. Smartassguy held the pipes
straight with a wrench, while his boss used a hot
torch to apply the solder. Well, it turns out his boss
wasn't such a smart-ass guy. After melting some solder
onto the pipe with his torch, the boss noticed a kink in the piping. Taking out his hammer, he
hit the pipe to correct it. And as soon as he did, a bead of molten hot solder flew off straight towards Smartassguy. There was no time to react. It shot straight into his eye, searing right through his pupil. The immediate, white-hot pain was bad, but for days afterwards, it hurt to blink, hurt
to keep his eye open, and hurt to keep it closed, too. It was like somebody was
continuously rubbing coarse sand in there. The solder had burnt a
jagged hole into his cornea, the clear outer layer
in the front of the eye. Luckily for Smartassguy, he
escaped with his sight intact, and incredibly the
injury healed on its own in less than a week. As for his boss? Well, I doubt they ever
saw eye-to-eye again. Gout-rageously Painful. Arthritis is a type of joint
pain commonly associated with old age. However, there's a
debilitating form you can get no matter what age you are, and it's one of the worst
in terms of pain: gout. Gout is a raw, throbbing inflammation of the joints that happens if you indulge in too much red meat,
booze, and sugary snack. These things all contain purines, which are common chemical compounds. When your body breaks purines down, it produces uric acid in your blood. Consume a lot of purine-rich food, and you'll create a lot of uric acid, which in turn causes sharp urate crystals to form and accumulate in your joints. Now, Gout occurs most
commonly in the joints of the big toe because uric acid is sensitive to temperature changes. Only at cooler temperatures does uric acid turn into crystals, and since the toe is
farthest from the heart, it is also the coolest part of the body So, yeah, if you get gout
that means you literally have hundreds of tiny,
hard, razor-sharp crystals building inside your joints, rubbing against your flesh and making it swell up aggravatingly. It's excruciatingly painful because the afflicted areas
also become hypersensitive, meaning you might roll
around in bed for hours trying to get comfortable,
finally get into a good position, and then, bam, a light breeze from your window will be enough to send hot pain ripping
through your joints again. And if a breeze can be that painful, imagine what squeezing the
tender area would be like or, then again, don't. Historically, the condition was known as "the disease of kings" because only the wealthiest could afford to overindulge enough to get it. Insanely, this association
with wealth actually made it a status symbol
amongst the aristocracy in 18th century Europe, who'd gloatingly nurse their big toes with an air of superiority. Imagine trying to impress a date by whipping out your
disgustingly engorged foot. Man, I was born in the wrong century. The Heinous Hawk. Remember how I said earlier that I cried after being stung by a wasp? Well, I'd probably start crying just at the sight of the pain-inducing insect you're about to see. This beast is the Tarantula Hawk wasp, and it has a sting so fearsome
that tarantulas flee from it, scared of being paralyzed and killed. The wasps grow up to a
beefy 4.5 inches in length, and the stingers themselves can reach a terrifying
7 millimeters in length more than 2 and half times
longer than a common wasps. Your boyfriend might try to tell you size doesn't matter, but this time, it definitely does. That's because if you're
unfortunate enough to be stung by one of these things, insect expert Justin O. Schmidt says the only appropriate response is to lay down and scream. And Schmidt's worth listening to, he created his own pain index, ranking 83 different insects
on how painful their sting is, all based on personal experience. You might think Schmidt's crazy, but the King of Sting knows his stuff. A single sting releases a large quantity of venom that's non-lethal to humans, but produces a blinding, fierce, shockingly electric pain. Now, that sounds bad enough
on your hand or something, but just imagine it on your eye. Fortunately, eye stings from
any insect are pretty rare, and this wasp isn't that aggressive. Plus, if you do get stung, the intense pain only
lasts about 5 minute. But it'll be a hell of a long 5 minutes. In fact, Schmidt only
rates one insect's sting as more painful than the Tarantula Hawk's, and you'll have to hang around if you want to find out what it is. A Key Issue. If there's one shockingly strong pain every one of us can relate to, it's stepping on a LEGO barefoot. Yeah, it's a bit cliché, but
that's because it's true. What's worse than stepping
on a LEGO, though, is stepping on an upright car key. Or, at least, that's what this poor guy would probably tell you. Ouch. Okay, so I've got no idea
how this could've happened, but I do know it must've hurt. Like, a lot. The reason stepping on
pretty much anything is so painful is because the soles of our feet have an absolute ton of nerve endings in them,
making them super-sensitive. For contrast, each of our palms have approximately 17,000 nerve endings, whereas the soles of our feet can have up to 200,000 nerve endings each. This seems like a pretty big flaw considering we literally
walk on our feet, doesn't it? However, scientists reckon
we've evolved this way so that we can feel what we're walking on with enough sensitivity to adapt our walking style to suit it. Say you're barefoot and have
to cross a patch of gravel, then a patch of soft grass. You're going to walk across them both very differently, right? Well, without sensitive feet, you wouldn't feel the difference and would be more likely
to injure yourself. What a ca-toe-strophe that would be. Fish Outta Hell. I'm not a big fan of fish. I mean, I'll eat it, sure, but at a restaurant it's
rarely my first choice. I'd like fish even less if one was shoved up,
ahem, Be Amazed Junior, if you know what I mean. Okay, so no-one's been running around forcing fish up people's private parts. But they don't have to. The Candiru does that all by itself. These tiny fish roam the waters of the Amazon Basin in South
America, hunting for prey. Spines on the covers of
their gills allow the fish to attach themselves to other bigger fish, and feed on their blood like little underwater vampires. But for 200 years, more sinister accounts of these vampiric fish have
spread across the globe, supposedly using their spines to get lodged in other places. The most recent of these
tales took place back in 1997, when a man known only as "F.B.C." was out by a river in Itacoatiara, Brazil. The urge to piddle arose, so he took out his wonkadoodle and added his own stream to the river. But suddenly, a gut-wrenching pain ripped right through his wiener. Something had swum up it and got stuck. Yep, a Candiru. The frightful fish was
lodged inside his urethra, spines sticking agonizingly into him and preventing its removal. Hours upon hours of surgery was the only thing that could get it out. Just the idea of a spiky,
slimy creature stuck up there makes me gag. But thankfully, this story is
probably just that, a story. While Candiru do exist, there's no real evidence of the fish ever swimming up anyone's pee stream, only legends and hearsay. It should be physically impossible for one to overcome the force
of the pee flow, anyway. Even so, would you ever risk a swim in Candiru-infested waters? Let me know down in the comments. Unforgiving Fibromyalgia. The one reprieve about the
punishing pain-inducers I've mentioned so far is that they've all been curable. But some things aren't so simple, and sufferers of fibromyalgia
know this all too well. This incurable condition not only causes pain throughout your whole body, but also increases your
sensitivity to other pain. So, if constant pain doesn't
sound bad enough for you, anything painful at all is
turned all the way up to 11, meaning a bumped knee might
feel like a broken bone. As well as enduring this hell, sufferers are fatigued, stiff, and find it difficult to
concentrate or remember things. But the worst part is that scientists aren't even sure what causes the disease in the first place. It's been linked to both
physical and mental factors, so the physical trauma of childbirth is just as likely to bring it on as a particularly bad breakup. They think its roots lie in the central nervous system
incorrectly processing pain, but I'm sorry to say
they don't know for sure. What we do know is that
you really don't want to get diagnosed with it. Here's one to you, fibromyalgia sufferers. Torturous Torsion. Ask any guy and they'll
go to great lengths to explain just how much being walloped in the crown jewels really hurts. This is because the male nether region contains a huge amount of
densely packed nerve endings in a small area, which aren't
protected by any bones, muscles, or fat. So, a solid hit to them can feel world-endingly painful. However, there's a fate far, far worse, and one I'm going to have
to word very carefully, so it doesn't set off all of
YouTube's take down algorithms. Testicular torsion is when the cord that connects a man's marble to the rest of his body twists around, cutting off the blood
supply to the marble itself. As well as immense pain, sufferers feel sick, feverish, and dizzy. Don't even try talking to them; it'll be like they're
on a different planet, a planet of pure pain. Crazily, you don't even need
to be doing anything active for it to happen, fellas. It could happen in your sleep. But, scariest of all, if the torsion isn't
untwisted through surgery within 12 hours, the lack of
blood can, brace yourselves, completely kill your marble. That's right, total marble death. To the point one or both
of your crippled conkers will have to be removed
entirely from their casing. I know I've covered some
grim stuff in this video, but testicular torsion is truly twisted. Sinister Syndrome. When you're on a hot vacation, nothing's quite as relaxing as taking a dip in the cool ocean waters. You know what would really
ruin your zen, though? If somebody swam up behind you, pulled out an electric drill, and started relentlessly drilling into your lower back with it. Yeah, that'd be pretty bad. Well, unfortunately, the sting
of the Irukandji jellyfish is said to feel just like that. This group of miniscule
box jellyfish measure in at barely half a cubic inch, the same size as a human thumbnail and can be much smaller. So, they're practically invisible in the waters of Australia,
where they're found, which is a problem because they're one of the
most venomous jellyfish in the world. Despite their teensy size, the Irukandji sting is 100 x more potent than a cobra's bite. Accidentally brushing against
one of these tiny terrors will at first feel like nothing more than a mosquito bite. But then the pain will grow, and grow, making you feel nauseous, giving you a pounding headache, and causing all the muscles in your body to cramp up excruciatingly. This is called Irukandji Syndrome, and before it happens, you'd better have made it out of the water and got medical attention, or things will get a whole lot worse. Some nurses have reported
treating patients who vomited every single
minute for 12 hours and sweated so profusely
that their bedsheets had to be wrung out every 15 minutes. These people were the lucky ones. In rare cases, the bite-size jellyfish have even been known to kill. And to top it all off,
throughout the entire ordeal, the sting brings on such an
intoxicating level of anxiety, the victims feel an overpowering sense of impending doom. Crikey. If it's anything like
the impending doom I feel when my alarm goes off in the morning, ooh, it must be terrible. The Stone Stent. We've already covered the
tormenting agony of kidney stones. However, I didn't tell
you about the aftermath. Interested? Well, seeing as you asked so nicely. As we've seen, in especially
bad cases of kidney stones, surgery can be required to remove them. After this surgery, your ureter, that's the tube that carries pee from your kidney to your bladder, might be a little damaged and
not functioning correctly. In order to ensure you
can piddle properly, there's only one thing for it. Taking an 11-inch-long rubber tube, and ramming it up your pee hole, all the way from bladder to kidney. Wait, what? Okay, so the procedure's a
bit more delicate than that, and the tube's proper
name is a ureteral stent, but the endgame is the same. The stent keeps your ureter
open and prevents blockages. As if going through the
hell of kidney stones wasn't bad enough, you've
now got to walk, talk, and live with a great big
plastic tube stuck inside you. Unsurprisingly, your body
doesn't take too kindly to this intestinal intrusion. You might get bladder spasms, constantly feel the need to wee, be sick, and, boy, don't get me
started on what it's like to actually pass urine. Reddit user "DifficultMinute"
describes the pain of peeing as so bad, it
brings you to your knees. But to reduce the risk of infection, you have to drink as
much water as you can. So, with every sip, you know
you're drinking yourself closer to another bout of severe suffering. What about when it's time to
take the stent out though? Don't worry. It has a piece of string
attached to the end of it that pokes out of your
pee hole the entire time you have it in. Oh, and by the way, if the string so much as
tickles against something, it'll send a sharp spike of pain right up your gonads. After up to 3 whole
months of this torture, your doctor will take a
good hold of the string and yank the entire 11-inch
nightmare out of you. Man, you'd be feeling pretty
strung out after that ordeal. Antagonistic Ant. Earlier on I mentioned
how the Tarantula Hawk ranked number two on Justin
Schmidt's pain index. So, what insect's sting is painful enough to take the top spot? Well, it's one you seriously
don't want to mess with-- The Bullet Ant. This monster of an ant
grows over an inch long, and its sting is so powerfully painful that many people believe it's
the worst pain known to man. Schmidt described a bite
in his foot from the ant like "walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail
embedded in your heel." Not only this, but the pain
can last an entire day, coming in waves of agony. And if you happen to get
stung while wandering the rainforests of
Central and South America, where these blighters live, you're unlikely to be stung just once. That's because after a
bullet ant stings you, it releases chemicals
that signal other ants to repeatedly sting the target too. Oh, come on. The ants inject you with poneratoxin, which, as well as triggering
excruciating pain, can also cause temporary paralysis, fever, and an irregular heartbeat. Yay. But at least it's not fatat. There's actually an indigenous tribe called the Sateré-Mawé in Brazil that use the ants in a
coming-of-age ritual. At just 13 years old, children of the tribe must put their hands into gloves full of the
angry, stinging insects for a full ten minutes. Australian comedian Hamish Blake tried to complete the ritual, but found the pain so
intense, he passed out and had to be hospitalized. Luckily, he left with nothing more serious than a swollen hand. Although, he left his dignity
with the 13-year-olds. Strabismus Surgery. It goes without saying
that having a time machine would be pretty wild. There are some points in history though that I really wouldn't
want to go back and see, like eye operations in
18th century England. Back then, medical science was
a lot more, um, rudimentary. Before anesthetic became commonplace, surgeons carried out complex and often harrowing procedures without giving the
patient any painkillers. What's more, the whole
affair was carried out in an operating theater with an audience of curious onlookers. As such, people were terrified
of surgery and rightly so. Now, English surgeon John
Taylor was the first person to try and correct amblyopia, a childhood condition
also known as a lazy eye, where vision doesn't
develop properly in one eye. Today, most cases are treated by placing an eye patch over the good eye, forcing the weaker eye to develop. But Taylor's methods were
nothing short of horrifying. Taylor would lie a patient
down on the operating table, force their bad eye open
with a little metal tool, and take up a pair of surgical scissors. Then, he'd bring the scissors down towards the patient's lazy eye and poke them right into the corner, making a deep incision, all while they were completely conscious. As if having a pair of scissors stabbed directly through
your eye wasn't terrifying or painful enough, Taylor then snipped a
slice through the bad eye. Jeez. This, he explained, was to cut the nerves of the extraocular muscle, which is the muscle that
controls the movement of the eyeball. But it turned out that Taylor was a fraud. The cuts he made in his patients' eyes were just random slices,
and to hide his shoddy work, he patched the patient's good
eye up after the surgery. Without the good eye for reference, the lazy eye looked as
if it had been fixed. So, not only did his patients endure a traumatically
painful surgical procedure, but they also still had a
lazy eye at the end of it. Yeah, I'd be pretty cut up about that one. Okay, if you managed to get to the end without at least grimacing, well, I'm not sure if I should
be more impressed or worried. Either way, what did you
think looked the worst? And what's the most painful
thing you've ever been through? Let me know down in the comments below, and thanks for watching.
