A new study has found that eating a better-quality diet was directly associated with a reduction in chronic pain severity, regardless of body weight. The findings suggest that upping overall diet quality could be an easy, affordable, and effective way to manage pain.
Chronic pain is a problem for around 20% to 30% of the world’s population. There’s a link between being overweight or obese and chronic pain. Studies have found that people with chronic pain are more likely to be overweight and that obesity may be a risk factor for developing chronic pain. Then, on the flip side, chronic pain can contribute to weight gain.
New research by the University of South Australia (UniSA) examined how the quality of what we eat affects the severity of chronic pain and whether body weight plays a role.
“It’s common knowledge that eating well is good for your health and well-being,” said Sue Ward, a researcher from UniSA’s Clinical and Health Sciences program and the study’s lead author. “But knowing that simple changes to your diet could offset chronic pain could be life-changing.”
The researchers collected data from 654 Australian adults (57% women) enrolled in the Whyalla Intergenerational Study of Health (WISH) between 2008 and 2009. The WISH study was originally designed to estimate the prevalence of chronic disease and associated social and environmental risk factors in Whyalla, an industrial city in regional South Australia.
Participants’ demographic and socioeconomic data were obtained via a telephone interview, and questionnaires gathered information on health behaviors, including smoking, self-assessed health status (including pain) and dietary intake data. The participants attended a local clinic to have height, weight, body composition and physical function (grip strength) measured.
The previous 12 months’ dietary intake was captured using a 40-question food frequency questionnaire, which assesses the participants’ frequency of intake of a range of ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ foods and beverages. Estimates of dietary frequency were used to score participants’ diet quality against the WISH Dietary Guideline Index (DGI), which consists of six core food components and three non-core components, reflective of Australian dietary guidelines.
Core food groups include fruits, vegetables, grains, lean meats and alternatives, and dairy and alternatives. Non-core food components include unsaturated spreads and oils, alcohol, and discretionary foods typically high in saturated fat, added sugar and salt. Total DGI scores ranged from zero to 90, with higher scores indicating greater adherence to the Australian dietary guidelines and, therefore, a higher quality diet. Sub-scores for core food components and non-core food components were also calculated.
For those interested in statistics, the researchers used beta coefficients, which, in regression analysis, are numbers that represent the strength and direction of the relationship between a predictor (independent variable) and an outcome (dependent variable). Here, they represented the strength and direction of the relationship between dietary intake (represented by DGI scores) and the outcomes of pain and physical function, accounting for body weight. The higher the absolute value of the beta coefficient, the stronger the effect of diet quality on the outcome.
Looking at the relationship between DGI scores for core foods and pain, positive betas suggested that better diet quality was associated with less bodily pain, regardless of adiposity or body fat. For women, there was a stronger positive relationship between diet quality (using DGI total scores) and bodily pain when accounting for body mass index (BMI). And stronger positive beta values for women indicated a similar but more pronounced association between core food scores and lower pain, regardless of adiposity. Beta values also indicated that, for women, better diet quality (DGI total scores) was associated with slightly better grip strength, even when accounting for adiposity.
In summary, the beta coefficients showed that a higher quality diet was associated with less pain and better physical function, with some effects being stronger in women and independent of adiposity or body fat.
“In our study, higher consumption of core foods – which are your vegetables, fruits, grains, lean meats, dairy and alternatives – was related to less pain, and this was regardless of body weight,” Ward said. “This is important because being overweight or obese is a known risk factor for chronic pain.
“Knowing that food choices and the overall quality of a person’s diet will not only make a person healthier, but also help reduce their pain levels, is extremely valuable,” continued Ward. “Women with better diets had lower pain levels and better physical function. But this effect was much weaker for men.”
The researchers suggested a mechanism by which a higher-quality diet might affect pain levels.
“It’s possible that anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of the healthier core food groups is [sic] what reduces pain, but we can’t yet determine whether poorer diet quality leads to more pain, or if pain leads to eating a poorer quality diet,” Ward said. “A healthy, nutritious diet brings multiple benefits for health, well-being, and pain management. And while personalized pain management strategies should be adopted, a healthy diet is an accessible, affordable, and effective way to manage and even reduce pain.”
The study was published in the journal Nutrition Research.
Source: UniSA
