When Lt. Col. Henry Beecher tended wounded soldiers not long after World War II, he noticed that many had varying degrees of pain despite having similar wounds. In his study published in Annals of Surgery in 1946, Beecher wrote that there is “a common belief that wounds are inevitably associated
If you have bumped your elbow against a table, you probably have instinctively massaged your elbow to reduce the pain. But why do you feel less pain when you rub it? And speaking of rubbing, why do many people tend to get short-term pain relief after a massage session?
Pain is an unpleasant sensation, but it isn’t always an indication that there’s tissue damage, disease, or abnormalities in your body. After all, there are many people who have shoulder “abnormalities” or leg length discrepancies with no pain and can function well. Some amputees have pain in their leg or
Part one of exercise and cancer highlights the evidence of what and how exercise can reduce the risk of cancer and the biological mechanisms behind exercise on cancer. Part two focuses on the psychological, social, and environmental factors that reduce the risk of some cancer and improve cancer survivors’ quality
A 15-year Canadian study of 889 patients with colon cancer found that those who exercised regularly had about a 25% lower risk of cancer recurrence and death over a five-year period than the control group who received health education. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025, the
Could being overweight increase the risk of having chronic pain? Some researchers think so. A 2025 study published in The Journal of Pain found that people ages 50 and up with chronic pain have also experienced “greater discrimination than people without pain in a community-based sample.” The researchers wrote that
The International Association of Pain Society (IASP) have introduced the term “nociplastic pain” in 2017 to describe chronic pain that does not fit into the other two existing pain descriptors: neuropathic and nociceptive. However, putting the new term into practice can be challenging since nociplastic pain does not have a
Researchers in a 2024 study of more than 15,300 patients with chronic low back pain found that patients’ pain drawings on a body chart “do not signify psychological distress.” Instead, they find that these drawings are more closely associated with physical symptoms, such as disability, pain duration, and pain intensity.
A 2022 study of 5,871 people in England found those with pain “are more likely to report discrimination than those without pain, and this experience is associated with increased depression and loneliness.” This population with perceived discrimination predicts “greater depressive symptoms and loneliness over 6-year follow-up,” the researchers wrote. Scott
Does having perceived discrimination increase the risk of chronic pain? Some researchers think so. Perceived discrimination is a person’s subjective experience of unfair treatment or negative attitudes based on their ethnicity, race, gender, age, body size, disability, and other characteristics. Discrimination is also defined as “process by which a member,
A 2021 systematic review of 14 trials (27,846 participants total) found a strong link between heavy backpack use and pain or musculoskeletal issues in teenagers, especially girls. Led by Dr. Nazila NeJhaddadgar from the Department of Health Promotion and Education at Ardabil University in Iran, the researchers wrote that some
A 2018 systematic review on children and teens with back pain found “no convincing evidence that aspects of schoolbag use increase the risk of back pain in children and adolescents.” Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the study pooled 69 trials with a total of more than 72,600