Physical Activity And Pain Tolerance

Picture from Science News

Almost all of my patients tell me they have a high tolerance for pain. That seems to be the most common reason why they sometimes do not come in early for treatment, thinking that they can tolerate the pain until it somehow goes away on its own. Some patients do have a higher tolerance for pain compared to others. Consuming too much sugar can be a contributing factor, I've written on that before. The following article may give further clues on why.

Since there are limited information on the association between lifestyle factors and pain severity in older adults, a group of researchers decided to investigate if unhealthy lifestyle variables were linked to feeling more pain.

Subjects who were above 50 years living in 27 European countries and Israel were sampled and their data retrieved. Association between lifestyle actors (smoking, sleep, diet and physical inactivity) and how they tolerated pain (mild, moderate or severe) were assessed. Age, sex, geographic region, education, history of chronic disease were all mutually adjusted for each lifestyle.

A total of 27,528 cases were included. The average age was 73 years and 63.3 percent of the cohort were female. A significant association was observed between those who hardly ever or never engaged in activities that required a moderate level of energy and severe pain (pictured above).

In addition, sleep problems, smoking and an inadequate diet were also significantly associated with severe pain, although with lower odds. 

The authors concluded that older adults that were physically inactive were more likely to experience severe pain. Sleeping poorly, smoking and an inadequate diet were less associated with experiencing severe pain. 

Since the above mentioned lifestyle factors are modifiable, they suggested that they may be useful as preventative measures to reduce pain and ensure healthy living.

Previously, I wrote about how strength training helps prevent frailty, especially when you grow older. Well, that's another very good reason to be active.

Reference

Numez-Cortez R, Cruz-Montecinos C, Lopez-Bueno R et al (2025). Physical Activity Is The Most Important Unhealthy Lifestyle Factor For Pain Severity In Older Adults With Pain. A SHARE-based Analysis Of 27,528 Cases From 28 Countries. Musc Sci Pract. DOI: 10.1016/j.mskp.2025.103270

Physical Activity And Life Expectancy

Earlier this month, I came across an older article (Janssen et al, 2013) about how leisure time physical activity is associated with increases in longevity. Men are expected to gain up to 2.6 hours of life with each hour of moderate activity and 5.4 hours of life per hour of vigorous activity.

Women are estimated to gain up to 5.6 hours of life per hour of moderate activity and 11.3 hours of life for every hour of vigorous activity!

Just last night I saw another article that was published just 2 weeks ago by Veerman et al (2024). The authors investigated how physical activity (PA) levels were associated with mortality rates. Whether low PA reduces life expectancy and how much life expectancy could be improved by increasing PA levels.

Ready for the results? For individuals in the lowest activity quartile, the greatest gain in lifetime per hour of walking would gain them an extra 6.3 hours with each additional hour of walking.

If all individuals were just as active as the top 25 percent of the population, those above 40 would live an extra 5.3 years.

Picture from Veerman et al (2024)

The  authors concluded that higher PA levels will provide a substantial increase in overall population life expectancy. 

So you know what you need to do if you want to live longer.

References

Janssen I, Carson V, Lee IM et al 92013). Years Of Life Gained Due To Leisure-time Physical Activity In The US. Am J Prev Med. 4491): 23-29. DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2012.09.056

Veerman L, Tarp J, Wijaya R  et al (2024). Physical Activity And Life Expectancy: A Life-table Anaylysis. BJSM. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2024-108125.

Physical Activity Decreases Your Risk Of Colorectal Cancer

Group ride on 090219 - definitely miss those rides

I was very active in primary school. Other than swimming occasionally and playing police and thief (running), I also played football, basketball, table tennis and badminton. It was only in secondary school that I started to be more serious with cross country running and athletics.

How about you? Try to recall what you were doing as a teenager. A recent study suggest that how active you were back then and and how you've maintained it till now is important when gauging your risk of colorectal cancer.

Physical activity during adolescence helps lower risk of colorectal cancer. If you have been able to continue daily moderate physical exercise well into adulthood, the results are even better.

The study showed that those who did at least an hour of physical activity daily from 12 to 22 years had a reduced risk of adenoma (polyps or a benign tumor formed from glandular tissue) by 7 percent compared to those who were less active. (Polyps are considered a precursor of colorectal cancer).

Those who started physical activity as adults reduced risk by 9 percent. However, those are were active as teens and continued being active for at least an hour as adults reduced their adenoma risk by 24 percent!

The researchers analysed the data of 28,250 female subjects aged 25 to 42. Physical activity, nutrition, hormones were among some of the data studied.

The researchers suggest that being physically active reduces the risk of colorectal cancer since it helps weight management and control and thereby affects insulin resistance and inflammation as they are involved in promotion and progression of cancer.

I would be very interested if the researchers measured how intense or hard the physical activities were. And how often were these higher intensity sessions and whether they made any difference.

However, this study did not analyse that. The authors did mentioned that previous studies have shown that moderate to vigorous activities were associated with lower bowel, breast and endometrium cancers.

Take home message is that there is a cumulative effect of physical activity as we grow older. Even if you have been inactive as a child, it is not too late to start now. And the longer you maintain that physical activity, the better off you'll be.


Reference

Rezande L, Lee DH, Keum N et al, (2019). Physical Activity During Adolescence And Risk Of Colorectal Adenoma Later In Life: Results From The Nurses' Health Study II. Br J Cancer. 121: 86-94. DOI: 10.1038/s41416-019-0454-1.

Picture above taken yesterday by Dennis Thong. I still try to be as active as possible daily with at least one complete rest day a week.

You should too.