How Changing our Lifestyle Changes our Pain
As we’ve explored the multi-dimensional nature of pain through this blog, we’ve discovered that pain is more than a physical sensation—it can deeply affect your emotional well-being, daily routine, and quality of life. Whether you're dealing with chronic pain from a long-term condition like arthritis, or intermittent discomfort due to stress or injury, responding to pain appropriately often requires a nuanced and multi-angled approach. Since the causes of pain are complex and sometimes not immediately apparent, it’s helpful to take a more active approach to our healing. This is opposed to the traditional passive approach which relies on the hope of an expert or specialist being able to simply find an ‘off’ switch through some procedure or pill.
So let’s take a look at some science-backed strategies that you can integrate into your lifestyle that have been shown to reduce pain naturally (and improve your overall health in the process).
1. Move More—But Mindfully
While it might seem counterintuitive to move when you're in pain, regular physical activity is one of the most effective ways to reduce it. Whether you’re committing to a strength training regiment or simply going on a daily walk around the block, consistent daily movement has been shown to be highly effective in managing painful sensations. This works on a few different levels but the one I want to focus on primarily is the effect it has on the nervous system.
When we move in dynamic ways, the nervous system creates new neural connections that prepare the system for future movements of a similar kind. The system is constantly creating these connections to prepare us for potential challenges we may face in the future. This ensures that we have the resources and ability to safely navigate whatever life throws at us. When we use our body in novel ways or when we apply heavy loads onto the muscle tissues (safely and without injury), we communicate to our body that it should be ready for this in the future. So it adapts, it grows stronger and more resilient.
Alternatively, when we don’t move very often, the body is more likely to panic when we inevitably do something outside of the domain of our habitual movements. When the body is uncertain, it’s far more likely to send pain signals to motivate our behavior to not do that thing that it’s unfamiliar with. To our central nervous system, it’s simply not worth the risk of potential injury which could compromise our survival, even if it’s something very mild.
As we integrate more movement into our lives, it’s important to keep in mind some of the themes from the other posts in this blog. Pain =/= Injury. Sometimes when we’re navigating chronic pain, new movements could potentially cause some flare ups of pain. There’s a balance we need to strike - we don’t want to overwhelm the system and “push through the pain”, but we also don’t want to stop at the first sight of something uncomfortable. I’d recommend working with a trained professional in assessing the difference between the two, and fundamentally - trusting yourself.
Here are some things to try out. If you need recommendations for a teacher or trainer in any of these let me know and I’d be happy to share some resources!
Try:
Low-impact exercises like swimming, walking, or cycling.
Stretching and yoga to stretch, become more flexible, and relax the nervous system
Strength training to build muscle, protect joints, and improve health markers in every category
Tai Chi/ Qi Gong to learn how to make complex movements while staying totally relaxed
Dancing to move your joints, express yourself, and explore the flow state
Somatic Practices to cultivate presence, body-mind connection, and to process difficult emotions
Even just 10–15 minutes a day can start to make a difference.
2. Eat an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
What you eat directly impacts your body’s inflammation levels, which can either relieve or worsen pain. A nutrient-rich, anti-inflammatory diet supports your body’s healing processes and reduces chronic pain symptoms. This also invites us to explore how we relate to food in general, which can provide a wellspring of deep meaning that contributes to living a more holistic and integrated life. My recommendation is to stick to the outer perimeter of the grocery store - the produce, dairy, meats, and egg sections.
Another element of the American diet that doesn’t get talked about too often is our reliance on cheap cooking oils. There’s considerable evidence pointing to cheap seed oils being large contributors to a whole host of adverse health conditions such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and cancer. The most common seed oils consist of: canola oil, corn oil, and grapeseed oil. Instead, we should be aiming to lean more into olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, or animal fats such as butter or tallow.
Food Recommendations:
Fatty fish (salmon,sardines)
Leafy greens (spinach, kale)
Berries (blueberries, strawberries)
Spices like turmeric and ginger.
Whole grains (quinoa, oats)
Legumes and beans
Green tea
Limit:
Refined Carbs (white bread, pastries)
Added sugars and sugary drinks
Processed meats (bacon, sausage)
Trans fats (partial hydronated oils)
Excess alcohol
Ultra-processed foods
3. Manage Stress—It’s Not Just in Your Head
Pain and stress often go hand in hand. When we’re experiencing stress, the body is tilting toward fight or flight which tenses muscles, increases inflammation, and heightens our sensitivity to pain. In fact, this is one of the major unseen contributors to a tense neck or shoulders. The problem is that our fast paced society by it’s very nature requires us to live on the precipice of stress. We spend a lot of our lives walking the tightrope while balancing the many plates that it takes to live in our individualistic and goal driven culture. To compound this issue, many of us don’t know how to downshift from this ever-present hum of stress. We often take this to be inherent to what it means to be a human, but in reality - much of it could be diminished if we had the clarity and appropriate practices to recognize and intentionally reduce it.
This is a big part of what massage excels at in the world of therapies. It creates a container for us to experience a vastly reduced quality of stress so that we can better learn about ourselves and what’s possible within our nervous system. Massage isn’t the sole domain of this though as there are many ways we can begin to work on reducing our stress.
Practice:
Mindfulness meditation is by far the most effective tool I’ve encountered at changing the way I relate with what arises in my experience. This has been shown to reduce our reactivity and increase equanimity.
Breathwork is a physiological approach which gives us some control over our autonomic nervous system. It’s immediate, powerful, and easy to get into.
Progressive muscle relaxation allows us to systematically and intentionally relax regions of our body. This is great for focusing our attention and learning about the mind-body connection
Psychotherapy is a wonderful modality to engage with as many of the stressors in our life are beyond our control. It’s helpful to have someone walk with us through the challenges of life.
Yoga Nidra or ‘Sleep Yoga’ is a beautiful practice that works by helping us maintain awareness while we drift into sleep. There are many free resources on this all over the internet, with some as short as 20 minutes or long as 2 hours.
4. Prioritize Sleep
Sleep plays a critical role in reducing pain - not just by helping you rest, but by actively modulating your body’s pain response and healing processes. When we don’t get enough sleep, our pain threshold drops, meaning things that normally wouldn’t hurt, start to. Our brain’s pain-processing regions (like the somatosensory cortex) often become more active as well. Lastly the brain’s natural pain-suppression systems (like the prefrontal cortex) become less effective at their jobs. This means that we feel more pain, more intensely.
Sleep also has been shown to reduce inflammation. There’s been substantial studies which show that poor sleep increases inflammatory markers like cytokines and C-reactive proteins. Good consistent sleep lowers these markers.
Alternatively, when we get good rest, our bodies produce growth hormone which helps repair muscles, bones, and other tissues. It also ramps up cellular repair, which essentially speeds up recovery from injuries or workouts.
Sadly, it’s common for chronic pain to cause poor sleep - so there’s a bit of a vicious cycle that often develops for people. Less sleep creates more pain which worsens sleep which creates more pain. It’s a tricky situation to find oneself in but there are certain ways we can create the foundation for a better sleep habits.
Improve sleep by:
Keeping a consistent bedtime routine.
Avoiding screens 1–2 hours before bed.
Making your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet.
Avoiding caffeine and heavy meals in the evening.
5. Address Habits That Worsen Pain
Certain lifestyle habits can quietly sabotage your efforts to feel better. The tricky thing is that, those lifestyle habits can vary from person to person. This means that it’s important to acquaint yourself with the things that are causing YOU pain. In order to do this, it’s helpful to start a journal or some other method of record-keeping for whenever you experience pain. Ask yourself, what did I do before this moment, maybe earlier in the day or even this past week? The more comprehensive of a record you keep surrounding your pain, the better you’ll understand your unique triggers. Is it a specific movement? Is it interacting with a particular person or place? Is it after you eat a certain food or consume some recreational substance?
Over time, you’ll be able to create a thorough map of the things that tilt you toward pain. From there, you can make choices depending on your relationship with those things. Are there any alterations you can make when you engage with that habit? Is it the habit itself or is it the environment surrounding the habit? There are many variables that any one activity can consist of, can you narrow down which variables are the activating ones?
For example, you begin to notice that having a couple of drinks with friends on a Friday night results in aggravated pain symptoms the next day. Rather than stopping this activity entirely, experiment with it! How about the next time you go out, you have a drink or two less, maybe you don’t stay out as late? It helps to initiate the changes one at a time so that you can really dial in what the specific trigger is.
***Exception***
When it comes to health habits, there is one that unilaterally will negatively affect your health on every metric - including pain sensitivity. This is smoking cigarettes! Research is pretty clear that nicotine usage will contribute to experiencing pain. Do with that what you will!
6. Explore Complementary Therapies
Modern pain management isn’t just about medication and movement. Many people find relief through more integrative approaches. Incorporating a diverse array of therapies can be not only a beneficial addition to one’s regiment, but also an enjoyable and informative one. The more therapeutic situations we place our nervous system in, the wider our internal vocabulary becomes - allowing us more experiences to draw from in how we relate to our bodies. It’s not a one size fits all despite what many providers may proclaim. A deep tissue massage may work wonders for someone but it may cause lasting pain in another. It’s helpful to be open-minded and explore what works well for our unique circumstances.
Consider:
Massage therapy for muscle pain and tension.
Acupuncture for chronic pain, especially in the back and neck.
Heat and cold therapy to soothe sore or inflamed areas.
Yoga Therapy for a more involved and dedicated practice
Shiatsu for a more traditional and slow approach to relating to pain
Somatic Practices to heighten our mind-body connection
Cranial Sacral for a gentle and slow presence sharing
These therapies can often be combined with conventional care for more complete relief.
7. Strengthen Your Social and Emotional Health
We often describe pain as being a biopsychosocial event. This means that it’s not simply our biology but also our mental health and social environment. Having a lot of drama, poor relationships, or a disruptive living/work environment directly affects the amount of pain we experience. The reality is, all of these things are intertwined, for to have poor relationships or to be isolated affects us physiologically. Our social interactions trigger important releases of chemicals, one of which is oxytocin, which has been known to reduce pain.
On the same note, when we don’t have somebody to confide in or share our celebrations with, it affects our psychology, which increases stress, and ultimately exacerbates pain. It might seem like an offhand thing to focus on but the reality is that it’s incredibly important to be well connected for navigating our pain journeys.
Ways to stay connected:
Join a support group (online or in-person).
Share your experiences with a trusted friend or counselor.
Check out meetup.com to find a local event that appeals to you.
Engage in creative expression—writing, art, or music therapy can help you process pain.
Final Thoughts
While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, consistent lifestyle changes can shift the way your body experiences pain. Think of these habits as small daily investments in your future health. Over time, they can lead to meaningful improvements in how you feel—both physically and emotionally.
If you’re unsure where to start, begin with one small change today. Even gentle movement or a 5-minute breathing exercise can set you on the path to better pain management.