Stress Lowers Ability to Bear Physical Pain

A new study finds that acute psychosocial stress has a dramatically deleterious effect on the body's ability to modulate pain. Prof. Ruth Defrin of the Department of Physical Therapy at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, 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 ...