Memory of pain induced by physical exercise

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the memory of pain induced by running a marathon and the factors that influence it. Sixty-two marathon runners participated in the study, which comprised two phases. Immediately after a participant had reached the finishing line of the marathon, they were asked to rate the intensity and the unpleasantness of their pain and the emotions they felt at that time. Either three or six months later they were asked again to rate the intensity and the unpleasantness of the same pain experience. Regardless of the length of recall delay, participants underestimated both recalled pain intensity and unpleasantness. The pain and negative affect reported at the time of the pain experience accounted for 24% of the total variance in predicting recalled pain intensity and 22% of the total variance in predicting recalled pain unpleasantness. Positive affect at the time of pain experience was not a significant predictor of both the recalled pain intensity and pain unpleasantness. It is concluded that pain induced by physical exercise is not remembered accurately and the pain and negative affect experienced influence recall. Further research is needed on the influence of positive affect on the memory of pain.

Pain begets pain. When marathon runners are not in pain anymore, they underestimate their memory of marathon pain––A mediation analysis

“…The intensity and unpleasantness of pain experienced after running the marathon predicts the recalled pain intensity and unpleasantness. Such an effect is in line with the previous study on the memory of pain induced by running a marathon (Bąbel, ) and also with many previous studies on memories of different types of pain (Bąbel, , ,b; Bąbel and Krzemień, ; Bąbel et al., ).…”

“…This is the second study on the memory of pain induced by running a marathon and, more generally, by physical exercise. Generally, we not only replicated, but also extended the results of the previous study (Bąbel, ). One of the biggest advantages of the current study is the fact that we measured many potential confounding factors, including sex, years of running, years of running marathons, mean weekly running distance and number of marathons before the study (see Table ).…”

“…The second factor influencing the memory of pain is time. The results of the previous study on pain induced by running a marathon demonstrated that the memory of that experience was underestimated three and 6 months after finishing a marathon (Bąbel, ). In the current study, we managed to capture the beginning of that process.…”

“…Nevertheless, the lower bound of confidence intervals for the indirect effect revealed a proximity to zero (95% CI: 0.01–0.17), indicating that other possible mediators cannot be totally excluded. For example, previous studies have shown that positive and negative affect may influence the memory of pain (Bąbel, , , , ,b).…”

“…Another example of pain related to positively valued experience is the suffering induced by physical exercise. Although the nature of this type of pain has been examined previously (Janal et al., ; Tesarz et al., ; Geva and Defrin, ; Rhudy, ), there is only one study on the memory of pain induced by physical exercise (Bąbel, ). The results of that research suggest that the memory of pain induced by running a marathon is underestimated: both three and 6 months after the pain experience, participants reported pain intensity and unpleasantness as lower than after reaching the finishing line.…”