New research involving marathon running has helped us understand how we perceive pain and how that perception changes as time goes on.
To determine if time affects our perception of pain, researchers asked 127 marathon runners to report their pain levels immediately after running a marathon. Researchers also asked runners to recall how much pain they were in during the race one week and one month after marathon completion.
After looking at the results, researchers found that runners underestimated their memory of pain as time went on. For example, a runner who claimed to have a pain score of “6” immediately after the race is more likely to rate that pain a five or a four when asked to recall how much pain they were in one week or one month down the road. Researchers say underestimating past pain is more common when the pain is associated with a positive event, like completing a marathon or getting a tattoo, instead of a negative event, like falling on ice and breaking your ankle.
“Suffering in a situation that is perceived as positive and desirable may be remembered differently than the pain associated with traumatic and poorly controllable events such as illness, injury or surgery,” lead researcher Przemyslaw Babel said.
Recollection Of Pain
It’s certainly an interesting study, and it makes sense that pain that is associated with a positive event or an accomplishment is often underestimated, especially when compared to pain associated with a negative event. It’s the same reason many runners sign up for another marathon shortly after completing the last one, even though it was painful. Pain is temporary, but the feeling of accomplishment last longer, and it leads to us underestimating “in the moment” pain when we look back on the event.
It would be interesting to take this study and bring it into the operating room. I would like to see how people estimate pain and discomfort levels before and after surgery, and then how they perceive it down the road, especially if we could track the outcomes after surgery. I’m sure we’d seen something similar, with people who experience the most healing and best outcomes underestimating their discomfort before and after surgery, while others who don’t experience as favorable of outcomes having a more accurate estimation of their past pain.
