Christina Titze, Kerstin Konietzny, Hannah Gajsar, Kelli Koltyn, Omar Chehadi, Monika I Hasenbring, Henrik Bjarke Vaegter
{"title":"The role of spontaneous vs. experimentally induced attentional strategies for the pain response to a single bout of exercise in healthy individuals.","authors":"Christina Titze, Kerstin Konietzny, Hannah Gajsar, Kelli Koltyn, Omar Chehadi, Monika I Hasenbring, Henrik Bjarke Vaegter","doi":"10.1515/sjpain-2022-0141","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Exercise-induced pain and exercise-induced hypoalgesia (EIH) are well described phenomena involving physiological and cognitive mechanisms. Two experiments explored whether spontaneous and instructed mindful monitoring (MM) were associated with reduced exercise-induced pain and unpleasantness, and increased EIH compared with spontaneous and instructed thought suppression (TS) in pain-free individuals.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Eighty pain-free individuals participated in one of two randomized crossover experiments. Pressure pain thresholds (PPTs) were assessed at the leg, back and hand before and after 15 min of moderate-to-high intensity bicycling and a non-exercise control condition. Exercise-induced pain and unpleasantness were rated after bicycling. In experiment 1 (n=40), spontaneous attentional strategies were assessed with questionnaires. In experiment 2, participants (n=40) were randomly allocated to use either a TS or MM strategy during bicycling.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In experiment 1, the change in PPTs was significantly larger after exercise compared with quiet rest (p<0.05). Higher spontaneous MM was associated with less exercise-induced unpleasantness (r=-0.41, p<0.001), whereas higher spontaneous TS was associated with higher ratings of exercise-induced unpleasantness (r=0.35, p<0.05), but not with pain intensity or EIH. In experiment 2, EIH at the back was increased in participants using instructed TS compared with participants using instructed MM (p<0.05).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>These findings suggest that spontaneous and presumably habitual (or dispositional) attentional strategies may primarily affect cognitive-evaluative aspects of exercise, such as feelings of exercise-induced unpleasantness. MM was related to less unpleasantness, whereas TS was related to higher unpleasantness. In terms of brief experimentally-induced instructions, TS seems to have an impact on physiological aspects of EIH; however, these preliminary findings need further research.</p>","PeriodicalId":47407,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Pain","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Scandinavian Journal of Pain","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/sjpain-2022-0141","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/7/26 0:00:00","PubModel":"Print","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CLINICAL NEUROLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Objectives: Exercise-induced pain and exercise-induced hypoalgesia (EIH) are well described phenomena involving physiological and cognitive mechanisms. Two experiments explored whether spontaneous and instructed mindful monitoring (MM) were associated with reduced exercise-induced pain and unpleasantness, and increased EIH compared with spontaneous and instructed thought suppression (TS) in pain-free individuals.
Methods: Eighty pain-free individuals participated in one of two randomized crossover experiments. Pressure pain thresholds (PPTs) were assessed at the leg, back and hand before and after 15 min of moderate-to-high intensity bicycling and a non-exercise control condition. Exercise-induced pain and unpleasantness were rated after bicycling. In experiment 1 (n=40), spontaneous attentional strategies were assessed with questionnaires. In experiment 2, participants (n=40) were randomly allocated to use either a TS or MM strategy during bicycling.
Results: In experiment 1, the change in PPTs was significantly larger after exercise compared with quiet rest (p<0.05). Higher spontaneous MM was associated with less exercise-induced unpleasantness (r=-0.41, p<0.001), whereas higher spontaneous TS was associated with higher ratings of exercise-induced unpleasantness (r=0.35, p<0.05), but not with pain intensity or EIH. In experiment 2, EIH at the back was increased in participants using instructed TS compared with participants using instructed MM (p<0.05).
Conclusions: These findings suggest that spontaneous and presumably habitual (or dispositional) attentional strategies may primarily affect cognitive-evaluative aspects of exercise, such as feelings of exercise-induced unpleasantness. MM was related to less unpleasantness, whereas TS was related to higher unpleasantness. In terms of brief experimentally-induced instructions, TS seems to have an impact on physiological aspects of EIH; however, these preliminary findings need further research.