Pain Sensitivity

Your result, the one DNA position behind it, and what the research says.

6/10 confidence.

About Pain Sensitivity

Pain-sensing nerve endings fire using a sodium channel called Nav1.7, built by SCN9A. The gene is famous at its extremes: rare changes that disable it entirely produce people who cannot feel pain at all, and other rare changes produce constant burning pain. This variant is the common, mild version of the same dial. It swaps one building block and makes the channel slightly more excitable, which studies associate with modestly lower pain thresholds. Pain is shaped enormously by context, expectation and mood on top of any of this.

Good to know: Rare changes in this same gene can remove pain perception entirely. This is the common, mild version of that dial. Attention, expectation and sleep move pain more than this variant does.

Fun fact: People born with both copies of this channel disabled feel no pain at all, which sounds enviable and is in fact dangerous: injuries go unnoticed until they are severe.

Discovery: The role of Nav1.7 in pain was established through families with congenital insensitivity to pain in the 2000s.

The Variant

The single variant behind this trait

Gene: SCN9A

Variant (rsID): rs6746030

Location: Chr 2:166,242,648

dbSNP rs6746030

The studies

A sodium channel gene SCN9A polymorphism that increases nociceptor excitability (Estacion M et al., Annals of neurology, 2009)

Influence of genetic polymorphisms on mechanical pain sensitivity and endogenous pain modulation of trigeminal and spinal areas (Soares FFC et al., Journal of oral rehabilitation, 2023)

Other lifestyle traits

Duffy Blood Group: The position that sets which of the two main Duffy forms sit on your red blood cells, one of the classical blood group systems.

Motion Sickness: A change in the promoter of an adrenaline receptor gene, linked to how easily travel brings on queasiness.

Leg to Torso Ratio: A marker between two genes on chromosome 5, linked to how a given height is divided between legs and torso.

Back to All Traits

Content updated September 2026.

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