It's a delicious but vicious cycle: Food, particularly high-sugar and high-fat foods, can bring acute relief both from physical and emotional pain, studies show. But in the long run, overeating may make your pain worse.

"My patients say when they hurt they have to eat," says Dr. Francis Keefe, Ph.D., professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, Durham. Unfortunately, pain relief from food is usually short-lived, and the long-term consequence is weight gain. And that can make your joints hurt, not to mention your self-esteem.

Economic stress really hurts. Literally. So finds a new survey conducted by the American Pain Foundation. Nearly 7 in 10 people (68 percent) with acute back pain or other muscle strains and sprains report that the recession has played a role in their pain. More than a third (37 percent) said the recession had a big painful impact.

"People are willing to admit that the stress of this recession is having an effect on their bodies," says Michael Roizen, MD., RealAge.com founder and chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic. "They are having to work harder now, and the stress of the economic situation seems to be having a physical stress on them." Working with King Pharmaceuticals, RealAge has launched a tool to help people prevent and treat back (and other) strains and sprains. 

Show off your moves in the Arthritis Foundation's Let's Move Together campaign, which promotes regular exercise for individuals with arthritis. Simply record your exercise routine and submit the video to their site.

It doesn't matter if you run, walk, swim, cycle, lift weights, practice yoga or even dance -- just move your body -- because "regular physical activity can help minimize the pain and stiffness of arthritis," according to Scott Walters, vice president of the Arthritis Foundation. In addition to lessening existing arthritis pain, regular moderate exercise can help prevent arthritis by promoting mobility, weight control and muscle strength. Low-impact exercises such as walking, tai chi, yoga or aquatics may most benefit those with arthritis rather than high-impact exercises like running. Before beginning a new exercise routine, consult with your physician about the best exercises for you.


More About Arthritis:
Exercise your arthritis away
Thought exercise would just increase arthritis pain? Bust these other arthritis myths
Need some motivation before you exercise? Join the iVillage arthritis community

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photo: drj inc.

Stubbed toes, paper cuts, a burn from a hot pan--all things commonly followed up with a few four-letter words. More intense events, like giving birth, usually elicit a lengthy torrent of language often attributed to longshoreman and truck drivers.

After hitting his finger with a hammer--and expressing a few expletives--Richard Stephens, PhD, a psychology teacher at Keele University in the United Kingdom, started to wonder if letting loose some nasty words had any bearing on one's tolerance of pain.

"A midwife said that swearing was very common on the delivery ward," says Dr. Stephens who witnessed Mrs. Stephens utter a few cuss words while in labor. "This really got me thinking about whether swearing affects pain directly and lead to this research."

He did a little poking around and found that no one had really established a link between swearing and the actual feeling of pain. So he and two colleagues, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston, decided to find out if using profanity would mitigate pain.

Their findings, published in July 2009 in NeuroReport, reports that yes, swearing does have a pain-lessening effect. Why is a little less clear. Perhaps because swearing actually taps in to the emotional brain center (right brain), instead of the left side where language production takes place. However it happens, it seems a few of F-bombs take the sting out of getting hurt.

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