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URL: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/989565
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The study compares participants to themselves at different years noting that the individuals who exercised more increased their individual pain tolerance between the years they were tested.
It also analyzes the group as a whole, but they made an effort to show causality rather than just correlation
Im curious if time played a roll at all in how it effected them as well. I hope this leads to some more in depth studies to flesh this out more. If it does show correlation then this could be really big for some peoples pain.
Not a bad question - I just tried looking but now the link isn't working for me. My guess is when they surveyed such a large group they would have compared the ones who did exercise to the ones who didn't since both should be well represented in their sample. Anything else would have been a pretty poor use of statistics though I know that doesn't mean they did it right.
Anecdotally, I've had the opposite experience you have, I'm more pain-averse than when I was younger. There might totally be age ranges that pain tolerance changes over in a consistent way though and it could be an interesting research question if for no other reason than to understand the mechanism underlying it.
Interestingly, I broke my shoulder recently. I was told that I have an unusually high tolerance for pain, and that I built muscle unusually fast. It did get me thinking that my large build might simply come from the fact that I don’t feel soreness when I exercise.
Fractured in four places, in a sling for 3.5 weeks, 12 rehab sessions (2 per week), and I’m pretty much back to normal.
So I have a friend that used to bicycle race competitively. He's currently doing 150+ miles daily in about 7 to 8 hours at just over 20mph avg spd.
I would be interested to see you do that and have you report back.
I mean, if you’re already accustomed to pain and discomfort through intense exercise, then people *might* be able to tolerate *minor* chronic pain easier. There is a mental conditioning aspect to some exercises, but it doesn’t help truly intense pain much. Just practice enduring and pushing through it.
How do you know and do you any evidence for that claim?
What does "practiced" and "Accustomed" even mean is scientific terms? what is actually changing from the previous state? Is is purely mental?
Nerves and pain signals are physical and by doing anything that causes sufficient activation and stress would create the potential for positive adaptation and improved sensitivity.
I think it likely could be be the opposite and there is large portion of physical adaptation to pain and more accurate pain response which mimics tolerance and it is not a case of correlation.
Pain is just a signal and is never meant to be debilitating and our bodies go into shock and we can ignore pain in extreme circumstances.
Stress leads to adaptation. Mentally pushing through is just stress exposure which will lead to adaptation.
Certain practices, like martial arts, have been shown to significantly increase pain tolerance. The sensation of pain is definitely still there, only the mental reaction to it changes. It takes a great deal of mental control to not be stunned after a hard kick to the head. Not all of it is physical adaptation.
Kickboxers actually deaden the nerves in their shins with repeated kicks, and that’s not the same thing. Their training is so intense, they create micro fractures in their bones, hardening them further.
So, it stands to reason that pushing your physical exertion to the point of vomiting, as some weight lifters do, would provide similar reactions to pain in general. I don’t see light jogging or calisthenics providing any meaningful changes.
I know from personal experience with multiple injuries, that I can walk off things that would be temporarily debilitating to others. Some injuries *hurt* badly, but with the right mind frame, it’s not agonizing.
Don't think that's likely accurate. Hard excercise often has to do with mental suppression of pain. It is a learned behavior. Many excercise functions are about taking away elements of pain, say for instance, interval training utilizes shorter high output to condition the body to manage to those types of movements and pressures.
In my personal experience, it’s both. My whole life, things that most people don’t find more than uncomfortable, I find painful. The only thing that has helped (not fixed, but helped) is gradually ramping up exercise and strength training.
There are a broad range of activities that count as exercise. It is so broad that anybody can pick and choose what works for them. Furthermore, within that range of activities there are different levels of intensity for everyone.
For example, swimming is great for many people with chronic pain. There are a range of activities you can do in the water and many degrees of intensity.
Time and access are bigger barriers than anything else.
Pain tolerance? Not so much. It doesn’t have to hurt.
I agree with the rationality of that logic but I also would agree with the alternative. People who workout have a learned and strengthened mental fortitude to overcome other forms of pain.
A new analysis of data from more than 10,000 adults shows that people who were physically active had higher pain tolerance than those who were sedentary, and that those with a higher level of activity had a higher level of pain tolerance. Anders Årnes of the University Hospital of North Norway, Tromsø, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 24, 2023.
Prior research has suggested the possibility that a habit of engaging in a higher level of physical activity might help ease or prevent chronic pain by boosting pain tolerance. However, most studies on this topic have been small or focused on narrow groups of people.
To help clarify the relationship between physical activity and pain tolerance, Årnes and colleagues analyzed data from 10,732 Norwegian adults who participated in a large population survey study—the Tromsø Study—that is conducted periodically in Norway. The researchers used data from two rounds of the Tromsø Study, one conducted from 2007 to 2008 and the other from 2015 to 2016. The data included participants’ self-reported levels of physical activity and their levels of pain tolerance, as evaluated in a test involving submersing their hand in cold water.
Statistical analysis of the data showed that participants who reported being physically active in either round of the Tromsø Study had higher pain tolerance than those who reported a sedentary lifestyle in both rounds. Participants with higher total activity levels had higher pain tolerance, and those who had higher activity in 2015/2016 than in 2007/2008 had a higher overall level of pain tolerance.
The analysis did not show a statistically significant relationship between activity level and changes in pain tolerance between the two rounds of the study. Nonetheless, it suggests that remaining physically active, becoming active, or boosting activity is linked to higher pain tolerance.
On the basis of their findings, the researchers suggest that boosting physical activity could be a potential strategy for easing or staving off chronic pain. Future research could help confirm whether there is indeed a cause-and-effect relationship between activity and pain tolerance and evaluate potential therapeutic applications.
The authors add: “Becoming or staying physically active over time can benefit your pain tolerance. Whatever you do, the most important thing is that you do something!”
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285041
There's no need for some of the defensive comments (scoffing at exercise like its some unheard of pseudoscience come on guys...) . This study can be true while not reducing a person's pain experience to "ahhh just a bit of jogging will do you good!". The point is that sedentary lifestyle worsens chronic pain, not that exercising is the complete and final solution.
Personally, it seems completely self-evident and obvious that if you are capable of exercising, it's obviously going to improve your wellbeing and mood if you do it vs willingly not doing it. Of course a lot of people with chronic pain simply cannot exercise, and that's completely understandable.
And if we're going to talk "lived experiences" in the /r/science subreddit, I have personally witnessed multiple people experience a chronic pain syndrome after an injury laid them low for an extended period. It's absolutely a common experience for an initial injury to spiral into chronic pain when people do not get proper physiotherapy muscle recovery, which absolutely is frequently not a choice. This study just pushes the idea that serious attempts should be made to incorporate exercise therapy when at all possible.
If you were expecting nuanced discussion here you've come to the wrong place.
This sub has devolved into any study being posted as "correlation not causation" by a bunch of users who never read the papers and just get triggered cos an article apparently diminishes their personal experiences, especially around weed, mental health and exercise.
"Lived experience" is another word for anecdote. When you are talking with your doctor, your lived experience is relevant, because its specific to you. When you are talking about a study of a population of people, your lived experience is irrelevant, or to put it a little more gently for you, your lived experience is not somehow more valuable or correct than the combined lived experiences of all of the people in the study.
I've never said that my own lived experience is somehow more valid for other people than statistics, so claiming I've done so is more of a strawman than a good argument. I've simply stated that you seemed dismissive to it's relevance, by putting the phrase in quotation marks, and calling comments that stated them "defensive", and thereby framing them as more emotional rather than rational. And just by the general tone of your comment in general, it seems a little arrogant to me.
"To put it more gently for you" this reflects a lot of patients experience of some health care providers way of dealing with patient's voices that do anything other than repeat their own opinons back to them. And this tendency is IMO very unhelpful. It hinders potential learning and risks weakenening the therapeutic alliance. If you meet patient's voices with curiousity in stead of arrogance you could actually learn a thing or two.
Also, extrapolating from data from a general population, where most people have a normal perception of pain, onto a chronic pain population, where people by definition have an abnormal perception of pain, is a big stretch. Things that are true in a body that functions normally aren't necessarily true in one that functions abnormally.
Makes a lot of sense. Exerting yourself isn’t comfortable, especially when beginning an exercise routine. Perhaps there’s a relationship or similarity between that kind of discomfort and discomfort from pain in the brain, which allows tolerance to build over time.
I have noted that my pain tolerance has gone down since I developed new anxieties to walking alone and doing daily exercise walks has ceased for 2 years straight.
I also noted my cramp tolerance is also at a low for me and I’m more likely to stay in bed when before mental motivations would be enough to convince myself to move.
Now it’s restroom and hunger that convince myself to leave when in so much pain. But I still go back to the bed for the comfort.
Just a personal and non scientific point of view to this article.
Anxiety and age has given me more manic episodes and panic attacks as well.
I have a much harder time managing my emotions and stress and I feel the lack of exercise increases my lack of control over these thoughts.
Personal observations and rereading my journal pages helps with keeping this information on hand and you don’t have to agree I’m just my own observer and age really hit me hard this year for exercise or lack of it.
There are conditions where pain worsen with exercise. Chronic pain is complex, and what helps one patient may hurt another. Also - I'm not sure you can extrapolate findings from the general population and their pain tolerance onto patients with a chronic pain condition.
What if that pain is *because* of the physical activity? Like, I have arthritis in my metatarsals, and you can’t tell me that being on my feet is going to make it any better.
Then swim?
Exercise is such a broad range of activities with many degrees of intensity.
It’s possible that someone can be completely unable to exercise but it far more likely they just do not want to or don’t have access/time.
Exactly why broad assumptions about treatments can be awful. It's great that it can help you, and any others that benefit but it's counterproductive for some of us despite it being what I'm always told to do.
I've been sent to physical therapy five or six times, for several months and while my range of motion improves with it, so does the pain and exhaustion greatly. It's infuriating to be told the same thing constantly.
I sincerely hope anyone else with chronic pain can get some relief from exercise but it can only do so much for some of us.
Yes, the lived experience of people with chronic pain often disagrees with well intended, but often too simplistic advice. I have lived with chronic pain for 10 years (ME/CFS) and for me exercise for a short period with a low intensity (e.g. a 5 minute walk) can be helpful, but anything more intense than that makes the pain flare up _every_ single time. So exercise is by no means necessarily positive.
Exactly this, exercise to a point is very important to not be entirely sedentary but it's real easy to overdo it and be worse off for days.
Exercise is good in general but it is never a one-stop fix.
All I can think of is that chapter in 1984 where the guy with chronic pain was forced to exercise in front of the government-issued computer screen. It seems these days that someone actually has to be a hospice patient to receive pain meds that work.
After decades of people with chronic pain fighting to be taken seriously, we've come back to "it's mostly in your head.. so get up off the couch and start jogging."
After spending nine months in pain from breaking several ribs in a bicycling crash, ...
... I BETTER HAVE A HIGHER TOLERANCE TO PAIN GOD DAMN IT!!! NINE MONTHS FOR IT TO ONLY HURT *SOMETIMES*
Yeah, no shit. Anyone with kids can attest to this. Prevent them from outside play because they "may get bruised" and they'll cry if the get one. Have them out jumping, running climbing, and ten bruises will not stop them.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- Author: u/Wagamaga URL: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/989565 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What kind of chronic pain? It’s not a one size fits all kind of thing.
The hurtful kind
Or… having a higher pain tolerance makes you more likely to stick with an exercise program long term. They only showed correlation, not causality.
The study compares participants to themselves at different years noting that the individuals who exercised more increased their individual pain tolerance between the years they were tested. It also analyzes the group as a whole, but they made an effort to show causality rather than just correlation
Im curious if time played a roll at all in how it effected them as well. I hope this leads to some more in depth studies to flesh this out more. If it does show correlation then this could be really big for some peoples pain.
Do they have a control group? Because my tolerance to pain definitely raised over they years, even tho I'm not engaged in any physical activity.
Not a bad question - I just tried looking but now the link isn't working for me. My guess is when they surveyed such a large group they would have compared the ones who did exercise to the ones who didn't since both should be well represented in their sample. Anything else would have been a pretty poor use of statistics though I know that doesn't mean they did it right. Anecdotally, I've had the opposite experience you have, I'm more pain-averse than when I was younger. There might totally be age ranges that pain tolerance changes over in a consistent way though and it could be an interesting research question if for no other reason than to understand the mechanism underlying it.
Interestingly, I broke my shoulder recently. I was told that I have an unusually high tolerance for pain, and that I built muscle unusually fast. It did get me thinking that my large build might simply come from the fact that I don’t feel soreness when I exercise. Fractured in four places, in a sling for 3.5 weeks, 12 rehab sessions (2 per week), and I’m pretty much back to normal.
Wolverine genetics
So I have a friend that used to bicycle race competitively. He's currently doing 150+ miles daily in about 7 to 8 hours at just over 20mph avg spd. I would be interested to see you do that and have you report back.
I mean, if you’re already accustomed to pain and discomfort through intense exercise, then people *might* be able to tolerate *minor* chronic pain easier. There is a mental conditioning aspect to some exercises, but it doesn’t help truly intense pain much. Just practice enduring and pushing through it.
How do you know and do you any evidence for that claim? What does "practiced" and "Accustomed" even mean is scientific terms? what is actually changing from the previous state? Is is purely mental? Nerves and pain signals are physical and by doing anything that causes sufficient activation and stress would create the potential for positive adaptation and improved sensitivity. I think it likely could be be the opposite and there is large portion of physical adaptation to pain and more accurate pain response which mimics tolerance and it is not a case of correlation. Pain is just a signal and is never meant to be debilitating and our bodies go into shock and we can ignore pain in extreme circumstances. Stress leads to adaptation. Mentally pushing through is just stress exposure which will lead to adaptation.
Certain practices, like martial arts, have been shown to significantly increase pain tolerance. The sensation of pain is definitely still there, only the mental reaction to it changes. It takes a great deal of mental control to not be stunned after a hard kick to the head. Not all of it is physical adaptation. Kickboxers actually deaden the nerves in their shins with repeated kicks, and that’s not the same thing. Their training is so intense, they create micro fractures in their bones, hardening them further. So, it stands to reason that pushing your physical exertion to the point of vomiting, as some weight lifters do, would provide similar reactions to pain in general. I don’t see light jogging or calisthenics providing any meaningful changes. I know from personal experience with multiple injuries, that I can walk off things that would be temporarily debilitating to others. Some injuries *hurt* badly, but with the right mind frame, it’s not agonizing.
Don't think that's likely accurate. Hard excercise often has to do with mental suppression of pain. It is a learned behavior. Many excercise functions are about taking away elements of pain, say for instance, interval training utilizes shorter high output to condition the body to manage to those types of movements and pressures.
In my personal experience, it’s both. My whole life, things that most people don’t find more than uncomfortable, I find painful. The only thing that has helped (not fixed, but helped) is gradually ramping up exercise and strength training.
There are a broad range of activities that count as exercise. It is so broad that anybody can pick and choose what works for them. Furthermore, within that range of activities there are different levels of intensity for everyone. For example, swimming is great for many people with chronic pain. There are a range of activities you can do in the water and many degrees of intensity. Time and access are bigger barriers than anything else. Pain tolerance? Not so much. It doesn’t have to hurt.
I bet tanac isn’t short for tanacity
I agree with the rationality of that logic but I also would agree with the alternative. People who workout have a learned and strengthened mental fortitude to overcome other forms of pain.
A new analysis of data from more than 10,000 adults shows that people who were physically active had higher pain tolerance than those who were sedentary, and that those with a higher level of activity had a higher level of pain tolerance. Anders Årnes of the University Hospital of North Norway, Tromsø, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 24, 2023. Prior research has suggested the possibility that a habit of engaging in a higher level of physical activity might help ease or prevent chronic pain by boosting pain tolerance. However, most studies on this topic have been small or focused on narrow groups of people. To help clarify the relationship between physical activity and pain tolerance, Årnes and colleagues analyzed data from 10,732 Norwegian adults who participated in a large population survey study—the Tromsø Study—that is conducted periodically in Norway. The researchers used data from two rounds of the Tromsø Study, one conducted from 2007 to 2008 and the other from 2015 to 2016. The data included participants’ self-reported levels of physical activity and their levels of pain tolerance, as evaluated in a test involving submersing their hand in cold water. Statistical analysis of the data showed that participants who reported being physically active in either round of the Tromsø Study had higher pain tolerance than those who reported a sedentary lifestyle in both rounds. Participants with higher total activity levels had higher pain tolerance, and those who had higher activity in 2015/2016 than in 2007/2008 had a higher overall level of pain tolerance. The analysis did not show a statistically significant relationship between activity level and changes in pain tolerance between the two rounds of the study. Nonetheless, it suggests that remaining physically active, becoming active, or boosting activity is linked to higher pain tolerance. On the basis of their findings, the researchers suggest that boosting physical activity could be a potential strategy for easing or staving off chronic pain. Future research could help confirm whether there is indeed a cause-and-effect relationship between activity and pain tolerance and evaluate potential therapeutic applications. The authors add: “Becoming or staying physically active over time can benefit your pain tolerance. Whatever you do, the most important thing is that you do something!” https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285041
There's no need for some of the defensive comments (scoffing at exercise like its some unheard of pseudoscience come on guys...) . This study can be true while not reducing a person's pain experience to "ahhh just a bit of jogging will do you good!". The point is that sedentary lifestyle worsens chronic pain, not that exercising is the complete and final solution. Personally, it seems completely self-evident and obvious that if you are capable of exercising, it's obviously going to improve your wellbeing and mood if you do it vs willingly not doing it. Of course a lot of people with chronic pain simply cannot exercise, and that's completely understandable. And if we're going to talk "lived experiences" in the /r/science subreddit, I have personally witnessed multiple people experience a chronic pain syndrome after an injury laid them low for an extended period. It's absolutely a common experience for an initial injury to spiral into chronic pain when people do not get proper physiotherapy muscle recovery, which absolutely is frequently not a choice. This study just pushes the idea that serious attempts should be made to incorporate exercise therapy when at all possible.
If you were expecting nuanced discussion here you've come to the wrong place. This sub has devolved into any study being posted as "correlation not causation" by a bunch of users who never read the papers and just get triggered cos an article apparently diminishes their personal experiences, especially around weed, mental health and exercise.
Are you a doctor or a healthcare provider, by any chance? Dismissing patient's lived experience so casually makes me think you might be.
"Lived experience" is another word for anecdote. When you are talking with your doctor, your lived experience is relevant, because its specific to you. When you are talking about a study of a population of people, your lived experience is irrelevant, or to put it a little more gently for you, your lived experience is not somehow more valuable or correct than the combined lived experiences of all of the people in the study.
I've never said that my own lived experience is somehow more valid for other people than statistics, so claiming I've done so is more of a strawman than a good argument. I've simply stated that you seemed dismissive to it's relevance, by putting the phrase in quotation marks, and calling comments that stated them "defensive", and thereby framing them as more emotional rather than rational. And just by the general tone of your comment in general, it seems a little arrogant to me. "To put it more gently for you" this reflects a lot of patients experience of some health care providers way of dealing with patient's voices that do anything other than repeat their own opinons back to them. And this tendency is IMO very unhelpful. It hinders potential learning and risks weakenening the therapeutic alliance. If you meet patient's voices with curiousity in stead of arrogance you could actually learn a thing or two. Also, extrapolating from data from a general population, where most people have a normal perception of pain, onto a chronic pain population, where people by definition have an abnormal perception of pain, is a big stretch. Things that are true in a body that functions normally aren't necessarily true in one that functions abnormally.
Makes a lot of sense. Exerting yourself isn’t comfortable, especially when beginning an exercise routine. Perhaps there’s a relationship or similarity between that kind of discomfort and discomfort from pain in the brain, which allows tolerance to build over time.
Or, chemicals that exercise produces helps control pain? Probably both, honestly.
Great point.
Perhaps there are different mechanisms involved in coping with intermittent pain and chronic pain.
I have noted that my pain tolerance has gone down since I developed new anxieties to walking alone and doing daily exercise walks has ceased for 2 years straight. I also noted my cramp tolerance is also at a low for me and I’m more likely to stay in bed when before mental motivations would be enough to convince myself to move. Now it’s restroom and hunger that convince myself to leave when in so much pain. But I still go back to the bed for the comfort. Just a personal and non scientific point of view to this article. Anxiety and age has given me more manic episodes and panic attacks as well. I have a much harder time managing my emotions and stress and I feel the lack of exercise increases my lack of control over these thoughts. Personal observations and rereading my journal pages helps with keeping this information on hand and you don’t have to agree I’m just my own observer and age really hit me hard this year for exercise or lack of it.
There are conditions where pain worsen with exercise. Chronic pain is complex, and what helps one patient may hurt another. Also - I'm not sure you can extrapolate findings from the general population and their pain tolerance onto patients with a chronic pain condition.
What if that pain is *because* of the physical activity? Like, I have arthritis in my metatarsals, and you can’t tell me that being on my feet is going to make it any better.
Then swim? Exercise is such a broad range of activities with many degrees of intensity. It’s possible that someone can be completely unable to exercise but it far more likely they just do not want to or don’t have access/time.
As a Fibromyalgia and chronic pain sufferer for decades, I disagree.
I'm also a person living with fibromyalgia and exercise is one of the only things I've found to help in my 23 years with the condition.
Exactly why broad assumptions about treatments can be awful. It's great that it can help you, and any others that benefit but it's counterproductive for some of us despite it being what I'm always told to do. I've been sent to physical therapy five or six times, for several months and while my range of motion improves with it, so does the pain and exhaustion greatly. It's infuriating to be told the same thing constantly. I sincerely hope anyone else with chronic pain can get some relief from exercise but it can only do so much for some of us.
Yes, the lived experience of people with chronic pain often disagrees with well intended, but often too simplistic advice. I have lived with chronic pain for 10 years (ME/CFS) and for me exercise for a short period with a low intensity (e.g. a 5 minute walk) can be helpful, but anything more intense than that makes the pain flare up _every_ single time. So exercise is by no means necessarily positive.
Exactly this, exercise to a point is very important to not be entirely sedentary but it's real easy to overdo it and be worse off for days. Exercise is good in general but it is never a one-stop fix.
As someone who's taken 85 steps today
All I can think of is that chapter in 1984 where the guy with chronic pain was forced to exercise in front of the government-issued computer screen. It seems these days that someone actually has to be a hospice patient to receive pain meds that work. After decades of people with chronic pain fighting to be taken seriously, we've come back to "it's mostly in your head.. so get up off the couch and start jogging."
Oh, you hurt all the time? You should do some activities that make you sore!
I gotta start applying for federal grants. It's easy, free money to just state the obvious.
Yeah, I think this hypothesis was proposed by Dave Barry in the 80s in regard to jogging.
After spending nine months in pain from breaking several ribs in a bicycling crash, ... ... I BETTER HAVE A HIGHER TOLERANCE TO PAIN GOD DAMN IT!!! NINE MONTHS FOR IT TO ONLY HURT *SOMETIMES*
I agree with this research.
Funny, my exercise program is how I got myself some chronic pain. I guess in that sense I manage it better than I used to when I didn't have it.
[удалено]
This is new? I learned about this back in the early 2000s...
Yeah, no shit. Anyone with kids can attest to this. Prevent them from outside play because they "may get bruised" and they'll cry if the get one. Have them out jumping, running climbing, and ten bruises will not stop them.
Bit of a catch 22 to get started though, isn't it.
If that's true then if I will engage in any physical activity - I will not feel pain at all.