PAIN TOLERANCE AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

-

 

 PAIN TOLERANCE AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 


    


In 2023, researchers from UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, the University Hospital of North Norway (UNN), and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health found that among more than 10,000 adults, those who were physically active had a higher pain tolerance than those who were sedentary; and the higher the activity level, the higher the pain tolerance.

Following this finding, the researchers sought to understand how physical activity might influence the likelihood of experiencing chronic pain several years later. And they wondered if this was related to how physical activity affects our ability to tolerate pain.

"We found that people who were more active in their free time had a lower chance of having various types of chronic pain 7-8 years later. For example, being just a little more active, such as going from light to moderate activity, was associated with a 5% lower risk of reporting some form of chronic pain later," says doctoral fellow Anders Årnes at UiT and UNN.

He is one of the researchers behind the study.

He adds that for severe chronic pain in multiple locations of the body, higher activity was associated with a 16% reduced risk.

Measured cold pain tolerance

The researchers found that the ability to tolerate pain played a role in this protective effect. That explains why being active could lower the risk of having severe chronic pain, whether or not it is widespread throughout the body.

"This suggests that physical activity increases our ability to tolerate pain and may be one of the ways activity helps to reduce the risk of severe chronic pain," says Årnes.

The researchers included almost 7,000 people in their study, recruited from the extensive Tromsø survey, which has collected data on people's health and lifestyle over decades.

After gathering information about the participants' exercise habits during their free time, the researchers examined how well the same individuals handled cold pain in a laboratory setting. Later, they checked whether the participants experienced pain that lasted for 3 months or more, including pain that was located in several parts of the body or pain that was experienced as more severe.

Among the participants, 60% reported some form of chronic pain, but only 5% had severe pain in multiple parts of the body. Few people experienced more serious pain conditions.

The research was recently published in PAIN -- Journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Pain and exercise

When it comes to exercising, if you already have chronic pain, the researcher says:

"Physical activity is not dangerous in the first place, but people with chronic pain can benefit greatly from having an exercise program adapted to help them balance their effort so that it is not too much or too little. Healthcare professionals experienced in treating chronic pain conditions can often provide valuable assistance with this. A rule of thumb is that there should be no worsening that persists over an extended period, but that certain reactions in the time after training can be expected."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

B12 MAY HELP PREVENT ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE.

-
Image
  B12 MAY HELP PREVENT ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. Worms don't wiggle when they have Alzheimer's disease. Yet something helped worms with the disease hold onto their wiggle in Professor Jessica Tanis's lab at the University of Delaware. In solving the mystery, Tanis and her team have yielded new clues into the potential impact of diet on Alzheimer's, the dreaded degenerative brain disease afflicting more than 6 million Americans. A few years ago, Tanis and her team began investigating factors affecting the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease. They were doing genetic research with  C. elegans , a tiny soil-dwelling worm subject of numerous studies. Expression of amyloid-beta, a toxic protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease, paralyzes worms within 36 hours of reaching adulthood. While the worms in one petri dish in Tanis's lab were rendered completely immobile, the worms of the same age in the adjacent petri dish still had their wiggle, documented as ...
Read more

EXTREME HEAT MAY NEGATIVELY IMPACT COGNITIVE HEALTH

-
Image
  EXTREME HEAT MAY NEGATIVELY IMPACT COGNITIVE HEALTH          July 2023 was the hottest month, with cities like Phoenix experiencing record-breaking heat waves for weeks. A new study finds that ongoing extreme heat can worsen cognitive decline among vulnerable groups -- particularly Black older adults and those living in poor neighborhoods. "Our research finds that cumulative exposure to extreme heat can undermine cognitive health, but it does so unequally across the population," said Eunyoung Choi, a postdoctoral associate at the NYU School of Global Public Health and the first author of the study, published in the  Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health . Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S., claiming more lives each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning combined. Young children and older adults are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Recent stud...
Read more

Diabetes drugs may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

-
Image
    Diabetes drugs may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. The study finds people taking the drugs have fewer biomarkers, slower cognitive decline. People taking certain drugs to lower blood sugar for type 2 diabetes had less amyloid in the brain, a biomarker of Alzheimer's disease compared to people with type 2 diabetes who are not taking the drugs and those without diabetes. The new study, published in the August 11, 2021, online issue of  Neurology , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, also found people taking these drugs, called dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, showed slower cognitive decline than people in the other two groups. In people with type 2 diabetes, the body no longer efficiently uses insulin to control blood sugar. Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, also known as gliptins, can be prescribed when other diabetes drugs do not work. They help control blood sugar when combined with diet and exercise. "People with diabetes have been shown to ...
Read more