Energy, Fatigue and Pain

Readers of the Institute for Chronic Pain website recognize it as a source of trusted and transparent information. The Institute for Chronic Pain aims to bring scientifically accurate information on pain and make it approachable to everyone. In so doing, the findings of scientific research is translated to provide understandable and hopefully helpful information to those with persistent pain and their families.

Photo by Joshua Rawson Harris courtesy of Unsplash1

To this end, last week, we published an article on fatigue and fatigue management, written by Jessica Del Pozo, PhD. Dr. Del Pozo translates the latest scientific research on fatigue and provides a number of concrete, simple-to-follow, strategies to access energy.

While acknowledging the role that insomnia can play in producing fatigue, the article doesn’t focus on insomnia and its management. Rather, Dr. Del Pozo reviews and explains the nature of the biological clock that’s inside all of us and which governs a variety of physiological processes, including our natural energy levels. Akin to a clock, these physiological processes form repeated patterns or rhythms of ebbs and flows across different bodily systems. They take their cue from both internal sources, such as hormonal levels, and external sources, such as natural light exposure. Energy levels, she explains, has a normal ebb and flow in a predictable rhythm.

With this knowledge in mind, Dr. Del Pozo reviews ways to accentuate these normal ebbs and flows. Knowledge, as the old adage goes, is power. She teaches us that you can predict when and how energy levels rise and fall, and what you can do to accommodate.

We hope you find Dr. Del Pozo’s article, Fatigue and Chronic Pain, informative and helpful.

Date of publication: 1-13-2019

Date of last modification: 1-13-2019

About the author: Dr. Murray J. McAllister is the editor at the Institute for Chronic Pain (ICP). The ICP is an educational and public policy think tank. Our mission is to lead the field in making pain management more empirically supported and to make that empirically-supported pain management more publicly acessible. To achieve these ends, the ICP provides scientifically accurate information on pain that is approachable to patients and their families.

Murray McAllister

Murray J. McAllister, PsyD, is a pain psychologist, and the founder and editor of the Institute for Chronic Pain. He holds a Doctor of Psychology degree from Antioch University, New England, and a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Oregon. He also consults to pain clinics and health systems on redesigning pain care delivery to make it more empirically supported and cost effective. Dr. McAllister is a frequent presenter to conferences and is a published author in peer reviewed journals. His current research interests are in the relationships between fear-avoidance, pain catastrophizing, and perceived disability.

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Adopting an Attitude that You're Healthy despite having Chronic Pain: Coping with Pain Series