Previous Adversity May Lessen Chronic Back Pain

Chronic back pain is back pain that has lasted more than 3 months despite attempts at diagnosis and treatment.  Chronic back pain is commonly associated with emotional stress and mental health conditions, such as depression, and can be difficult to treat.  The fact that there are many alternative medicine treatments promoted for chronic back pain emphasizes this point.  A new study from the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Irvine, published in the journal Pain, suggests that having a little adversity in life can be protective and beneficial for back pain.

The study recruited almost 400 patients with chronic back pain, using online or mailing enrollment.  Participants were asked to report their health status and previous life events, as well as answering questions about exposure to 37 different lifetime adverse events, such as injury to themselves or a loved one, sexual or non-sexual cruelty or violence, grief, social issues and stresses in relationships.   Information was also gathered on difficulties associated with their chronic back pain, such as immobility, disability status from employers, pain treatment, medication use, and diagnoses of psychiatric disorders.

Analyses showed that those participants with some lifetime adversity reported less physical impairment, disability and heavy utilization of health care than those who had experienced either no adversity or a high level of adversity.  Further analyses failed to support alternative explanations of the findings.  In fact, the results represent a U-shaped relationship, something seen with a number of other heath conditions.

The researchers speculate that the findings may reflect the possibility that resilience occurs in low to moderately stressed subjects.  Adversity may promote the development of psychological and social resources that help tolerance of adversity, leading to better chronic back pain outcomes.  “It may be that the experience of prior, low-levels of adversity may cause sufferers to reappraise stressful and potentially debilitating symptoms of back pain as minor annoyances that do not substantially interfere with life.”