DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, says our pain threshold goes down when we're sleep-deprived.

WSJ: When It's Worth It to Skip a Workout and Sleep

Getting comfortable when you sleep is important because a lack of sleep can cause joint inflammation and lowers your pain threshold, experts say.

WSJ: Find the Perfect Sleep Position

He used to call days like today "ultimate puke days" when people sell anything they can because they have reached their ultimate pain threshold.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Will says the welfare state has lowered our national pain threshold.

FORBES: America The Prosperous

It is fine going on about having a high pain threshold, but it is just the sheer physicality of the game that can be the real test.

BBC: Champions League analysis

Governor Wheeler and his fellow cohorts are expected to step up their resistance against further NZD strength, especially now that they have revealed their pain threshold level in the spot market for the NZD currency value.

FORBES: Euro Bulls' Rise Slow But Steady

Pannes said there was not a specific sum that opened the door to people looking to move abroad for tax purposes -- it depended more on an individual's "pain" threshold.

CNN: Hamilton faces 'battle' with taxman

We played for another 10 years, but we still laugh about the ringing in the ears and the workman-like way we went at each other that spring, conditioning ourselves to raise our threshold for pain.

CNN: Junior Seau was hurting and didn't know how to say it

Unsurprisingly, once we phrase tax policy as a collective exercise in fiscal masochism, our threshold for tax pain turns out to be very low.

CNN: 3 ways to relieve our tax hangovers

The second reason for our low threshold of tax pain lies deeper: We have allowed our fiscal debates to be framed in a way that highlights only the pain of opening our wallets.

CNN: 3 ways to relieve our tax hangovers