Pain is a complicated phenomenon. It’s the No. 1 reason that people seek medical relief, and yet there’s only so much clinicians can do to ease patients’ suffering.

That dilemma was what drove Dr. Marie Hoeger Bement to study chronic pain. An assistant professor of physical therapy, she researches the role of exercise in alleviating pain. Her research is supported by the Arthritis Foundation and the American Pain Society.

Acute pain, which is associated with tissue injury, is easy to understand and straight forward to treat. But with chronic pain, the cause isn’t so obvious.

“It’s hard for the patient as well as the clinician to understand,” Bement says. Patients with chronic pain even perceive pain differently, possibly because their central nervous system has become more sensitized, she says.

Although there’s no cure for many chronic pain conditions, exercise could help. Exercise-induced analgesia was first identified in long-distance runners, who can become oblivious to their bodies’ complaints when experiencing “the runner’s high.” But high-intensity aerobic exercise isn’t feasible for everyone. Bement wants to learn if the same effect can be achieved through low-intensity, isometric exercise, similar to the movements of yoga and Tai Chi.

“A lot of people with pain have a fear of movement, and with isometric exercise people aren’t moving; they’re just contracting their muscle,” Bement says. “It’s easy to do, and everyone can do it.”

She compares exercise-induced analgesia between healthy individuals and fibromyalgia patients, and also between genders. Although women have lower pain thresholds and higher pain ratings when exposed to a painful stimulus, they may also experience greater pain relief after high-intensity isometric contractions. Now Bement is trying to understand why.


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