The impact of rumination on fibromyalgia pain after physical activity: an experimental study 2023 Fonseca das Neves et al

Abstract

Some fibromyalgia (FM) patients engage in rumination (i.e. a chain of repetitive, passive and relatively uncontrollable thoughts focused on negative content) to cope with the pain and discomfort of daily activities. The partial model of rumination in chronic pain suggests that rumination processes may play a causal role in maintaining pain. Rumination might also be one of the key factors interfering with the reestablishment of adapted physical activity. The objective of this study was to test how rumination vs. distraction induction influence FM patients’ pain intensity, discomfort linked to pain, and affect after physical activity.

Forty-seven participants with a diagnosis of FM were randomly assigned to undergo distraction induction vs. rumination induction after performing a physical activity in ecological setting. Their pain intensity, pain-related discomfort, and affect were measured at the baseline, after physical activity, and after rumination versus distraction induction. A series of mixed-design ANOVAs showed that rumination induction after physical activity impairs patients’ recovery in terms of pain intensity and discomfort, but not affect, as compared to the distraction condition.

In conclusion, participants with fibromyalgia who engage in rumination following a physical activity recover less from their pain experience as compared to distraction induction. These results are consistent with the partial model of rumination in chronic pain and support the idea that rumination may play a causal role in the development and maintenance of pain.

Open access, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47414-z

 

Nonsense. I have days when any movement around the house involves pain sensations all day.

The pain sensing nerves are so abnormally sensitized that doing one ankle circle or one other range of motion joint exercise can feel in the next day (and persist for 2 days) like a injury to soft tissue like an ankle sprain.

Rumination or shall I term it constructive review? is more common sense and trying to remember what effect any movement or pushing my physical limit will result it: is the pain going to be worth the miniscule uptick in fitness? Unfortunately, the answer is usually "no."

And this heightened pain perception exists despite small doses of tizanidine 3x/day.
Despite distraction, heat, capsaicin cream.

I almost laugh when researchers suggest (by the direction of their studies) that somehow a FM patient can redirect their thought during pain, tell themselves it ain't so bad. Pain is pain, unfortunately we are wired to pay attention to it and it is "unpleasant."

 

In scanning the full article, note that the recruitment of these patients were done by a rheumatogist AND a psychiatrist, so that depression and anxiety and/or other mental illnesses were present at a clinically significant level. This does not represent FM patients as a whole. Rumination is a feature of depression or at least of anxiety, rumination about anything.

All of the authors are part of psychology or psychiatry departments.

 

Evidence-based medicine for chronic health issues is looking more and more like some weird competition to replace the Stanford prison experiment as the new textbook example of how to conduct laughably awful research.

And frankly, I'd say they've outdone it. This is far dumber and this whole era will be studied for decades, if not centuries, as some weird dark age of medical research.

It's so bad that pretty much all psychological research can now be dismissed as worthless, you simply cannot tell if any of the results are credible. Any process that not only produces but certifies this much garbage can be wholly dismissed.

Also is Nature now just publishing whatever research researchers just happen to cough up the money for open access? They get their money and don't care about the rest? I guess so.

 

One doctor told me to "Stop obsessing about it (my symptoms)." I asked him if he would say the same thing to someone with a spear sticking through them. It's not obsessing if it's inescapable, especially for pain.

 

That's my feeling about it. The profession would have to make a major effort to change my perception of it.

 

I thought changing your perception was their entire purpose for existing.

 

"Do you believe in magic....?"

(Courtesy of the Lovin' Spoonful)

 

A pox on these researchers!

 

Should have titled the research, Depressed FM patients' rumination vs distraction in recovery after physical exercise.