Physical activity and exercise for chronic pain in adults: an overview of Cochrane Reviews
One article on PainSci cites Geneen 2017: A Rational Guide to Fibromyalgia
PainSci notes on Geneen 2017:
Chronic pain, exercise, and physical activity are all heavily studied, and yet the surprising result of this massive review of reviews — a super review of twenty-one other reviews, encompassing 381 studies and more than 37,000 participants — somehow amounts to nothing more than “it’s promising, but more study needed.” How can this be? Because most of those 381 studies were individually small and lame, statistically underpowered. Garbage in, garbage out … on a huge scale.
Where there’s smoke there’s probably at least a small fire: “The available evidence suggests physical activity and exercise is an intervention with few adverse events that may improve pain severity and physical function, and consequent quality of life.” But it’s far from the conclusion we’d like to see (even from underpowered studies). Exercise may be “the closest thing there is to a miracle cure” for many other medical problems, but not so much for chronic pain.
Obvious disclaimer: some kinds of pain are undoubtedly more responsive to exercise than others.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
related content
- “Exercise for chronic musculoskeletal pain: A biopsychosocial approach,” Booth et al, Musculoskeletal Care, 2017.
- “Reasoning exercise dosage for people with persistent pain,” Lagerman, In Touch, 2018.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Cannabidiol (CBD) products for pain: ineffective, expensive, and with potential harms. Moore 2023 J Pain.
- Inciting events associated with lumbar disc herniation. Suri 2010 Spine J.
- Prediction of an extruded fragment in lumbar disc patients from clinical presentations. Pople 1994 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- Characteristics of patients with low back and leg pain seeking treatment in primary care: baseline results from the ATLAS cohort study. Konstantinou 2015 BMC Musculoskelet Disord.
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial. Kuyken 2022 Evid Based Ment Health.