Feb 08, 2015 02:06 PM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Stress not only takes a toll on you psychologically, it could also put your body at risk as well, according to a recent study.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that acute psychosocial stress has a dramatically deleterious effect on the body's ability to modulate pain. Although pain thresholds and pain tolerance seemed unaffected by stress, they saw a significant increase in pain intensification and a decrease in pain inhibition capabilities.

"Stress is defined as a sense of uncontrollability and unpredictability, precisely like being stuck in traffic where you are helpless and have no control over the situation," Prof. Ruth Defrin, who led the study, said in a statement. "Stress can have positive repercussions in a challenging work environment, for example, but overall it has primarily negative effects."

For the purpose of the study, 29 healthy men underwent several commonly accepted pain tests to measure their heat-pain thresholds and pain inhibition, among other factors. In one test, for example, subjects were asked to signal the moment a gradually increasing heat stimulus became painful to identify their respective pain thresholds. They underwent a series of pain tests before and immediately after exposure to the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST), a computer program of timed arithmetic exercises, designed to induce acute psychosocial stress.

"To further test the effect of stress on pain, we divided the group according to stress levels," Defrin said. "We found that not only does psychosocial stress reduce the ability to modulate pain, the changes were significantly more robust among subjects with stronger reaction to stress ('high responders'). The higher the perceived stress, the more dysfunctional the pain modulation capabilities became. In other words, the type of stress and magnitude of its appraisal determine its interaction with the pain system."

Defrin said the results were also somewhat surprising.

 "We were sure we would see an increased ability to modulate pain, because you hear anecdotes about people who are injured during fighting or sports having greater pain modulation," she explained. "But we were surprised to find quite the opposite. While there was no visible effect of acute stress on the subject's pain threshold or tolerance, pain modulation decreased in a very dramatic way."

Defrin said that although there is no way to predict the type of stress people will feel under different circumstances, "it is advisable to do everything in our power -- adopt relaxation and stress reduction techniques as well as therapy -- to reduce the amount of stress in our lives."

The findings are detailed in the journal PAIN.

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