Traffic slows to a crawl, then a stop. You are trapped in a bottleneck nightmare, and late for a meeting. The stress takes a toll on you psychologically -- but your body is at risk as well, according to a Tel Aviv University researcher.
A new study by Prof. Ruth Defrin of the Department of Physical Therapy at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine published in the journal PAIN finds that acute psychosocial stress has a dramatically deleterious effect on the body's ability to modulate pain. Prof. Defrin, together with TAU doctoral student Nirit Geva and Prof. Jens Pruessner of McGill University, applied acute stress tests on a large group of healthy young male adults to evaluate the behavior of the body's pain modulation mechanisms prior to and after the induction of stress.
The researchers found that although pain thresholds and pain tolerance seemed unaffected by stress, there was a significant increase in pain intensification and a decrease in pain inhibition capabilities.
[For more of this story go to http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.../02/150205111806.htm]
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