Acute Psychological Stress May Lower Your Pain Threshold

Psychological stress holds a direction connection to how much pain we can endure, according to researchers at Tel Aviv University.

They used acute stress tests on a large group of healthy young male adults to better evaluate the behavior of the body's modulation mechanisms prior to and after the introduction of psychological stress.

Twenty-nine healthy men were given several pain tests to determine their heat-pain thresholds and pain inhibition. For instance, some subjects were asked to signal the moment they gradually felt the introduction of heat stimulus. Then, they underwent a series of pain tests before and immediately following the exposure to the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST), otherwise known as a computer program composed of timed arithmetic exercises that are designed to induce acute psychological stress.

Researchers referred to part of the MIST testing as a psychological trick. While the test provides live feedback to responses, only 20 to 45 percent of the responses are correct even if a submitted answer is the right choice. Furthermore, new subjects have also been told that most of the participants score 80 to 90 percent of the questions correctly. 

"To further test the effect of stress on pain, we divided the group according to stress levels," Prof. Ruth Defrin of the Department of Physical Therapy at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, said in a news release. "We found that not only does psychosocial stress reduce the ability to modulate pain, the changes were significantly more robust among subjects with stronger reaction to stress ('high responders'). The higher the perceived stress, the more dysfunctional the pain modulation capabilities became. In other words, the type of stress and magnitude of its appraisal determine its interaction with the pain system.

"We know from our previous studies and studies of others that chronic stress is far more damaging than acute stress, associated not only with dysfunctional pain modulation capabilities but also with chronic pain and systemic illnesses."

Researchers were surprised to learn that more exposure to reoccurring stress did not necessarily mean an individual would be better able to deal with pain. While certain stress-invoking situations will affect some differently than others, researchers concluded that picking up relaxation techniques to help better manage could provide a partial solution. 

"Modern life exposes individuals to many, recurrent stressful situations," Prof. Defrin concluded. "While there is no way to predict the type of stress we will feel under different circumstances, it is advisable to do everything in our power - adopt relaxation and stress reduction techniques as well as therapy - to reduce the amount of stress in our lives."

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal PAIN.