From osteoarthritis to a splitting migraine, when you’re experiencing pain, exercise can seem like the last thing you want or think you should do. But according to new Adelaide University research it could be one of the most effective ways to help ease your symptoms.
In a new study of 157 systematic reviews, 2736 randomized controlled trials and 221,279 participants, researchers found that exercise can significantly reduce acute and chronic pain across a wide range of conditions including musculoskeletal, neurological, inflammatory, and cancer-related pain.
Importantly, shorter-duration and lower-intensity programs delivered greater pain reductions, with significant benefits also seen in programs involving less than two hours of exercise a week.
Overall, exercise reduced pain by around 1.1 points on a 0–10 scale – a reduction around 60% larger than the average pain relief reported for common pain medications in separate chronic pain trials.
This study is the most comprehensive synthesis of exercise for pain relief to date.
Globally, chronic pain affects one in five adults.
Lead researcher Dr Ben Singh said despite compelling evidence that exercise can deliver meaningful benefits, it remains underused as a treatment for pain.
When we exercise, our body releases chemicals including endorphins and serotonin that can help reduce how strongly we feel pain and increase our pain tolerance. Additionally, it helps calm inflammation and change the way our brain responds to pain, while also improving mood. These effects help explain why exercise can be such a powerful tool for pain management. Yet despite the evidence, it isn’t used as routinely as it could be and is rarely prescribed with the same precision as medication. Instead, people experiencing pain may be told to ‘stay active’, rather than being given a specific, evidence-based exercise program that considers what type of exercise to do, how hard to work and for how long.”
Dr Ben Singh, Study Lead Researcher, Adelaide University
Researchers examined how the type, intensity and duration of exercise influenced pain relief, as well as whether the benefits differed across acute and chronic pain conditions.
“Our study found that exercise was associated with substantial reductions in acute and chronic pain across all forms of exercise – whether that be via aerobic or resistance exercise, or through gentler movement such as yoga, Pilates or tai chi.
“Importantly, we found that more exercise wasn’t necessarily better. In fact, shorter-duration and lower-intensity programs showed greater reductions in pain, suggesting people may not need to exercise harder or for longer to experience meaningful benefits.”
Senior researcher, Adelaide University’s Professor Carol Maher said clinicians should be encouraged to integrate exercise as a core component of multimodal pain care.
“Health care providers need definitive guidance, not just whether exercise helps, but which exercises work for which patients, and how to prescribe them effectively,” Dr Singh said.
“These findings should provide clinicians with considerable flexibility and increased confidence to prescribe exercise as a core, scalable component of pain management across diverse conditions.
“At a time when we’re looking for safe and effective ways to manage pain beyond medication, these findings provide strong evidence for making exercise a more routine part of pain care.”
