• Mats Kirkeby Fjeld, Anders Pedersen Årnes, Bo Engdahl, Bente Morseth, Laila Arnesdatter Hopstock, Alexander Horsch, Audun Stubhaug, Bjørn Heine Strand, Christopher Sivert Nielsen, and Ólöf Anna Steingrímsdóttir.
• Division of Mental and Physical Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
• Pain. 2023 Apr 1; 164 (4): 838847838-847.

AbstractEpidemiological literature on the relationship between physical activity and chronic pain is scarce and inconsistent. Hence, our aim was to assess the relationship applying comprehensive methodology, including self-reported and accelerometer measures of physical activity and different severity levels of chronic pain. We used data from the Tromsø Study (2015-2016). All residents in the municipality, aged 40 years and older were invited to participate (n = 32,591, 51% women). A total of 21,083 (53%) women reported on questionnaires. Additionally, 6778 participants (54% women) were invited to wear accelerometers (6125 with complete measurements). Our exposure measures were self-reported leisure time physical activity, exercise frequency, duration, and intensity and 2 accelerometer measures (steps per day and minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day). Outcome measurements were chronic pain and moderate-to-severe chronic pain. We used Poisson regression to estimate chronic pain prevalence and prevalence ratios for each physical activity measure, with adjustments for sex, age, education level, smoking history, and occupational physical activity. Our main analyses showed an inverse dose-response relationship between all physical activity measures and both severity measures of chronic pain, except that the dose-response relationship with exercise duration was only found for moderate-to-severe pain. All findings were stronger for the moderate-to-severe pain outcomes than for chronic pain. Robustness analyses gave similar results as the main analyses. We conclude that an inverse dose-response association between physical activity and chronic pain is consistent across measures. To summarize, higher levels of physical activity is associated with less chronic pain and moderate-to-severe chronic pain.Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

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