The Pain of Fibromyalgia Is Readily Evoked by Anger or Sadness
Thu, October 21, 2010 at 02:00AM Many studies have shown that negative emotions (sadness, anger) and pain are commonly associated, but none have examined whether these feelings can amplify pain – until now. A report in the journal Arthritis Care & Research describes a study that does this. It’s known that women with fibromyalgia experience negative emotions more frequently than other women, and their emotions are often handled in a less healthy way, leading to painful symptomatology. In the study, sadness and anger were compared to see if they had similar effects on the perception of pain in both fibromyalgia patients and healthy women.
The participants were 62 women with and 59 women without fibromyalgia. They were all asked to recall a neutral situation, and then both anger-inducing and sadness-inducing situations. Spontaneous pain and experimentally-induced pain were measured in each situation.
In response to anger- and sadness-induced situations, women with fibromyalgia had increased spontaneous pain reports; both groups of women had decreased threshold to pain and pain tolerance in the experimental pain tests. The reaction to sadness predicted spontaneous pain reports, whereas the reaction to anger predicted both spontaneous and experimentally-induced pain responses.
It’s not surprising that women with fibromyalgia respond more readily with pain to negative emotions. What’s important is for loved ones to recognize this risk, and to ‘dial down’ interactions that might trigger a pain response.
There’s good news on the treatment of fibromyalgia. Individually-tailored cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), together with exercise therapy, has produced positive results in the short-term with the promise of long-term activity. And yoga – a simple, once-a-week pilot program of stretching and meditating - has helped patients achieve improvements in pain, fatigue, mood, etc., as reported in the journal Pain.
Reader Comments (1)
I agree with this article, definitely emotions affect people when they are sick and the pain they experience can increase if these emotions are negative. I always advise my patients to relax and take it easy when faced with difficult situations to avoid pain.