Exercise-induced hypoalgesia after acute and regular exercise: 2020 Vaegter, Jones

Exercise-induced hypoalgesia after acute and regular exercise: experimental and clinical manifestations and possible mechanisms in individuals with and without pain

https://journals.lww.com/painrpts/F...e_induced_hypoalgesia_after_acute_and.11.aspx

mentions fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and ME/CFS

 

methods are deeply flawed subjective testing always leads to unreliable and easily biased conclusions .

 

Did anybody not know that pain tolerance is increased during and a bit after 'exercise'? This is a virtually universal human experience - if you've ever been healthy and, say, played a sport.

In fairness to the authors they point out that this tends to get screwed up in a lot of conditions:

It certainly could make sense to study the (patho)physiology of this phenomenon. However you obviously can't directly harness it clinically unless you endeavor to have patients constantly chased a cougar or something.

 

I don't think you'd have difficulty recruiting with that but the participants may be a bit confused.

 

Am I misunderstanding something?

Have they found that, contrary to the alleged normal experience of healthy people, if they take someone who has damaged joints (due to say arthritis) and make them pointlessly and repeatedly mobilise that joint, then these people report an increase in pain, rather than a decrease.

And then done the same with other categories of people with various medical issues which would suggest that pointless and repetitive movement would probably cause pain?

What's next, taking people with shattered legs and then noting that attempting to run 'hurts'?

 

Hypoalgesia, hyperalgesia - how d'you objectively measure that then? How can you tell what's the right amount of pain?

When healthy and getting fit or if I'd been on a long project or on holiday that interfered with my usual exercise I would expect some pain as I got back into it. However, unless I'd twisted or sprained something this pain was typically eased by movement. Even more telling, there was less pain at the next session and not more.

It seems to me that trying to test hyper or hypo when it comes to pain is a little absurd.

The location, type of pain, how long that pain lasts and looking at what if anything eases it are all better things to look at. Though none of it is an actual measure as such.