Physical activity as a central pillar of lifestyle modification in the management of chronic musculoskeletal pain: a narrative review

Review written by Dr Sarah Haag info

Key Points

  1. Physical activity has a potentially beneficial effect on many factors contributing to the experience of chronic pain.
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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Chronic pain is a worldwide problem, causing disability, increasing mortality, and up to $635 billion in healthcare spending annually (1). Despite the spending on addressing chronic pain, the prevalence of chronic pain has not decreased.

The objective of this narrative review was to analyze physical activity as a central pillar of lifestyle modification in the management of chronic pain by considering the effects of physical activity on pain modulation, as well as on other lifestyle domains such as sleep, stress management, smoking behavior, and dietary habits.

Chronic pain is a worldwide problem, causing disability, increasing mortality, and up to $635 billion in healthcare spending annually.
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Clinicians do need to acknowledge and respect that there are many barriers to physical activity, including but not limited to pain, that need to be addressed as part of a treatment plan.

METHODS

  • A search was performed in MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Reviews were searched from inception to November 2024, with a combination of the search terms “chronic pain”, “physical activity”, “exercise”, “sleep”, “stress”, “diet”, “nutrition”, and “smoking”, linked by Boolean operators.
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