The Awesome Effect Exercise Has on Your Pain Tolerance
Your body will really appreiciate this.
By Prevention
This article was written by Victoria Wolk and repurposed with permission from Prevention.
It's hard enough to find the motivation to exercise, let alone if you're one of the 100 million Americans dealing with chronic pain on a daily basis. But like most things that are good for us, it's worth pushing yourself to get it done. In addition to reducing pain, stiffness, and inflammation, new research shows that regular aerobic exercise (like a daily walk or quick stint on the elliptical) could actually turn down the volume of your discomfort by increasing your pain tolerance.
There are all kinds of different pains that we feel, but the study, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, measured two specific types: ischemic pain—a burning pain you feel when your muscles aren't getting enough oxygen (similar to the pain caused by peripheral arterial disease)—and pressure pain—like you might feel when there's too much pressure applied to a muscle during a massage.
After six weeks of cycling for 30 minutes three times a week, participants' tolerance for ischemic pain was significantly increased, says study author Matt Jones, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia. And even if you don't have ischemic pain, there's still some good news: Past research has shown that aerobic exercise may also increase pressure pain tolerance. So while a twinge in your knee or achy back will still hurt, you should be able to tolerate them more easily.
Researchers aren't sure exactly why exercise helps with pain tolerance, but their current theory is that it causes changes in the higher processing centers in your brain; that is, the same amount of pain is being produced, but your brain is processing the pain signals differently. "We suspect it's largely psychological," says Jones. "I think it's important to know that if you suffer from chronic pain, you shouldn't avoid exercise for fear of making your pain worse."
Not sure where to start? Try these gentle workouts that help make exercising through aches easier.
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