Exercise response to pain

What is pain?

“An unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Pain is an unpleasant feeling that is conveyed to the brain by sensory neurons. The discomfort signals actual or potential injury to the body. However, pain is more than a sensation, or the physical awareness of pain; it also includes perception, the subjective interpretation of the discomfort. Perception gives information on the pain's location, intensity, and something about its nature. The various conscious and unconscious responses to both sensation and perception, including the emotional response, add further definition to the overall concept of pain.”

A literature review on “impact of exercise on pain”

There is enough evidence that there is a considerable reduction in pain after resistance training based on the research done by KF Koltyn and RW Arbogast. The main objective was to assess the influence of resistance exercise on pain threshold and pain ratings. After an extensive research done on various subjects there was a conclusion that pain ratings were definitely lower after a session of resistance training and that the pain threshold was increased subsequent to the session. Resistance exercise consisted of 45 minutes of lifting three sets of 10 repetitions at 75% of an individual's one repetition maximum.

“Exercise improves your pain threshold,” says Trent Nessler, PT, DPT, MPT, a vice president with Champion Sports Medicine in Birmingham, Ala. “With chronic pain, your pain threshold drops -- in other words, it takes less pain to make you feel more uncomfortable. With cardiovascular, strengthening, and flexibility exercise, you can improve that pain threshold.”

Studies also show a gross improvement in Fibromyalgic impact questionnaire (FIQ) with reference to pool exercises. For those with chronic pain, exercise may be the last thing you feel like doing. However, a new study finds that getting active may actually help alleviate some pain, including that related to nerve damage. Neuropathic pain or pain caused by nerve damage is a complex problem in which the nerve fibers may be damaged, dysfunctional or injured causing symptoms such as shooting and burning pain and tingling and numbness. The impact of nerve fiber injury includes a change in nerve function both at the site of the injury and the areas that surround it. Some common causes of neuropathic pain include diabetes, multiple sclerosis, shingles, chemotherapy treatment and alcoholism

How exercise relieves pain?

Improves flexibility. Although it may be more comfortable now to avoid moving painful joints, in the long run, this can cause joints to stiffen. In the worst case, you could lose the use of the painful joint. Moving your joints helps relieve stiffness and keeps them flexible. It increases your circulation within the joints and dissipates the noxious metabolites that irritate the nerve endings causing pain.
Strong muscles. Exercise strengthens muscles, and strong muscles mean better support and protection for painful joints. Inactivity, on the other hand, can cause muscles to become weaker and less able to support painful joints. Exercise improves circulation, provides nutrition to the muscle tissues and removes the wastes that induce pain
Denser bones. Arthritis-related inflammation, as well as the corticosteroids often used to treat it, can lead to loss of bone density, causing bones to become brittle and prone to fracture. Your bones, like your muscles, respond to exercise by growing stronger, so more exercise could mean fewer fractures. 
A healthy heart. A regular exercise program is one of the best lines of defense against heart disease. Thus reduces general debility by conditioning your heart and lungs to make you more mobile and gain efficiency through cardiovascular endurance. A regular exercise program may improve or help you maintain your ability to perform your daily activities
Increased sense of well-being. Living with pain can lead to a cycle of painful emotions and depression. Exercise can help break the cycle by reducing pain, boosting your mood, and improving your sense of well-being by the release of endorphins and serotonins. Exercise also reduces the bouts of depression and anxiety caused by inability, by enlarge also increases the pain threshold of a person.
More benefits. If that's not enough, consider these other benefits of a regular exercise program: increased energy, better sleep, weight control, and the opportunity to socialize with friends.

Thus a supervised and well-designed exercise protocol done with a rehabilitative pain management motive can relieve pain and give the best possible results.