Fun fact: Is getting kicked in the balls the worst pain imaginable?

The bassist of a Dutch metal band called Delain, during a show in Birmingham, England, suffered an injury due to an explosion that ruptured one of his testicles. The blow to his genitals caused a lot of pain, but he continued the show.

After the show, he went to the hospital where, according to his Facebook page, 500 ml of blood was removed from his scrotum and the testicle was sewn up. He stated that he came very close to losing his left testicle, but the chances that everything would be okay were good.

Is it possible to injure a testicle to the point that it needs to be surgically removed?

Yea! Paul Wood is proof of that. The 30-year-old English rugby player ruptured one of his testicles during a 2012 match after taking an "accidental knee" (his words) to the groin. The wound was so severe that his doctors actually cut off one of his testicles. "It's something I will look into," he told the BBC of his future plans to wear protective gear. "Because obviously I only have one now."

Both the heavy metal bassist and the rugby player suffered massive damage to their testicles after receiving a heavy blow to the sack. And yet, in both cases, they didn't immediately stop what they were doing. The bassist says he managed to finish the show before finally seeking medical attention. And Wood claims that after his injury, he was able to stay for 20 minutes until coach Tony Smith pulled him out of the game.

Does it really hurt to injure the testicles?

When someone kicks you in the testicle, you may react as if it were the most painful thing that has ever happened to you in your life. But if the bassist and player were able to endure the "unbearable pain" before seeking medical attention, perhaps a man's reaction to being kicked in the scrotum is over-exaggerated and over-estimated?

No of course not. Every man has probably experienced an unpleasant and painful blow to the balls. And it hurts for a reason. "Evolutionarily, it makes sense," says Dr. Kramer. "Your body is made to reproduce. It protects itself from trauma to its genitals for the survival of the species. Therefore, the testes are privileged to have extrasensory connections that give you a lot of sensation when they are attacked, to protect your reproductive organ." Therefore, it is a reaction, in a way, of defense.

But as terrible as it may seem, on a pain scale of 0 to 10, experiencing testicular trauma may not be the most painful thing that can happen to you. In fact, it can be a level 4 pain.

Level of pain in the testicles after receiving a bee sting

Michael Smith, a graduate student at Cornell University, conducts some research. One day, a bee flew into his shorts and stung him in the testicles. Which made him wonder: is a bee sting on the testicles worse than, say, a bee sting on the ass or hand?

Using himself as a guinea pig, he forced the bees to sting every part of his body, from head to toe, 190 times in all over a period of five weeks. Sounds crazy, but he studies bee behavior at Cornell, so apparently he knew how to do it safely.

What he's learned is that getting poked in the balls isn't the most painful. It is only fourth most painful, with a pain rating of 7.0. The most painful place to get a bee sting? Your nose, with a rating of 9.0. The second place went to the upper lip, with a score of 8.7.

Is lifting weight with the testicles bearable?

Zhao Zhenhua, who is supposedly a Chinese kung fu master, made a video where he held 80 kg in his testicles and rocked the weight back and forth 320 times.

When the video began to circulate on the internet, it was widely reported that this practice had something to do with improving fertility. "Banging weights on the testes or scrotum will actually increase the size of the scrotum," says Dr. Kramer. "This is just about stretching the fabric, like African tribes do with earrings in their ears, for example. Unfortunately, it won't increase reproductive potential - that's a big myth."

But how does he do it? How do you hang a weight like that on your balls and not pass out from the pain in the sack?

A trick like this requires many years of "conditioning the body and reacting to pain." Or so says Tim Cridland, aka "Zamora the King of Torture", who has dedicated his life and career to doing just that. As an artist, he regularly squeezes meat skewers and needles into his arms and cheeks. Which is not to say we should all learn to stick skewers in our arms and hang weights from our balls. But in general, it helps to remember that pain is as much a learned reaction as it is a physical reaction.

And this is especially true for men and their testicles. "The fear of being kicked in the balls and of any attack on the genital area is a very primitive fear," says Cridland."

Can a kick in the bag kill?

A man once died after a woman squeezed his testicles.

Well, let's not go crazy here. Bad things happen to the testicles. In 2012, a 42-year-old man in China got into an argument with a woman, and she squeezed his balls so hard that he dropped dead, possibly from a heart attack.

Even testicle accidents that do not result in fatalities are often caused by preventable behaviors. Did you know that a guy once let a hyena eat his sack because a "sorcerer" told him to? What about another man who took a lawn chair into the bathroom and had his squirts crammed into it? Well, there are people who do these things.

Researchers at the University of Newcastle have been studying a phenomenon called the "male idiocy theory". They examined the reckless behavior displayed by winners of the Darwin Awards, a sort of annual celebration of human stupidity. Focusing on a 20-year period (1995 to 2014), they found that 88.7% of Darwin Prize winners were men, meaning men are more likely to do stupid things that can hurt.

Our balls are not the problem. Maybe we need to spend less time worrying about our testicles and more time figuring out how to avoid the idiocy and totally avoidable accidents.