More Gains, No Pain: Walking 4 hours every week ‘may improve your pain threshold’
Becoming more active can help you cope better with pain.
Walking even four hours a week can improve your tolerance to pain, suggests a study, which experts hope could potentially mean you need fewer painkillers to cope with everyday health problems like headaches and back pain.
Researchers looked at more than 10,700 people, who were asked to select one of four categories for their average physical activity over the past year.
If they exercised or played sports several times a week, they could choose the vigorous activity category, or they could select the moderate activity category if they spent at least four hours a week doing things like tennis or heavy gardening.
If they walked, cycled, or engaged in similar exercise at least four hours a week, they chose the light exercise category, and if they mostly did sedentary activities, they fell into the sedentary group.
It is well known that exercise reduces everyday aches and pains by keeping the joints flexible. But the results suggest that fitter people may feel pain they suffer less intensely
All of these people dipped their hands in cold water for as long as they could tolerate it to test their pain tolerance.
The most active people, in the vigorous activity category, were able to keep their hand in the water more than 16 seconds longer than people in the sedentary group.
But even those in the light activity category could endure the pain nearly seven seconds longer than sedentary people.
It is well known that exercise reduces everyday aches and pains by keeping the joints flexible.
But the results suggest that fitter people may feel pain they suffer less intensely.
Anders Arnes, who led the study from the University Hospital of Northern Norway, said: ‘Exercise can have an effect on the same pathways in the brain as painkillers such as morphine, albeit to a much lesser extent.
‘Our results suggest that regular exercise can help improve pain tolerance, just as the so-called “runner’s high” we get after jogging can make pain less painful.
“There are studies that suggest that people who are more active take painkillers less often, and we wonder if these effects of being active can even make things like childbirth a little less painful, although a lot more research would be needed to establish that.” to set.’
Previous studies have suggested that athletes have a higher pain tolerance compared to other people.
The new study involved people aged 30 to 87 who were asked about their physical activity in two surveys seven or eight years apart.
Among those who took both surveys, those who reported at least four hours of moderate or vigorous activity at both time points were able to hold their hand in cold water 20 seconds longer than sedentary people.
When the averages of both surveys were taken, people who engaged in vigorous activity endured pain for 16.3 seconds longer than sedentary individuals, while those who engaged in moderate exercise endured pain for 14.1 seconds longer, and those who doing light exercise, such as walking, could manage 6.7 seconds longer.
These results came even after the study authors took into account other factors that can affect pain tolerance, such as people’s age or health conditions.
The authors of the study, published in the journal PLOS One, conclude: ‘Getting or staying physically active over time can benefit your pain tolerance.
“Whatever you do, the most important thing is that you do something.”