Jeff LangmaidFounder, The Evidence Based Chiropractor

The Role of Psychological Factors in Chronic Pain | Exploring New Research

2 Sept 2023 · 1 min

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Jeff Langmaid (YouTube video) discusses how psychological factors strongly influence chronic pain — modulating pain intensity, altering neuronal circuits (notably the corticolimbic system), and being present in nearly all chronic pain cases. He introduces a study that hypothesized widespread pain hypersensitivities, increased temporal summation of pain, and enhanced psychological distress in chronic regional pain patients; the presenter says much of that hypothesis was borne out.

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One of the key components here to keep in mind, tying into some previous podcast episodes, is psychological factors can play a big role. They can modulate pain intensity. They can alter the neuronal circuits, and this ties into the corticolimbic system. And this is an important component, psychological factors. Anytime I'm going to see the word chronic in pain, 9 times out of 10, 99 times out of 100, there is a psychological component. Now, is that psychological component a majority of the challenge, a contributing factor, correlative or causative? It depends is the answer to that. But it is a factor in some capacity nearly every time we're going to see chronic pain. So in this study, they hypothesized two things. One, widespread pain hypersensitivities and increased temporal summation of pain, as well as enhanced psychological distress in chronic regional pain patients. That was what they hypothesized, and much of that came true. As we'll talk about.