Ah, but the opposite is also true! A sympathetic partner actually increases back pain. Whereas a partner who is a pain in the ass...
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...ch/ai_97994341
Quote:
A study by German psychologist Herta Flor of the University of Heidelberg found that a spouse's reaction can affect how much pain a person with chronic back pain experiences. The study compared two groups of people with chronic back pain. One group consisted of people with 'solicitous spouses' who reacted to signs of discomfort by getting medicine and waiting on them. The second group had 'non-solicitous spouses' who gave the pain less attention; they tried to provide a distraction or left the room.
The subjects' backs were electrically stimulated to induce pain while an EEG recorded brain wave activity. Patients with solicitous spouses showed three times as much brain activity as those with non-solicitous spouses if their spouses were present. Interestingly, the high brain activity decreased when the solicitous spouse left the room. Patients with solicitous spouses were also more likely to display overt signs of pain.
Herta Flor said that spouses need to become aware of how they respond to partners who suffer from chronic pain. She suggests that they distract partners from the pain (by encouraging them to go for a walk, for example) rather than reinforcing the expressions of pain by attending to them. Dr. Eugene Melvin, pain specialist in Orlando, Florida, agrees. Robyn Suriano of The Orlando Sentinel quotes Dr. Melvin as saying: "A spouse can be overly supportive almost to the point where they're enabling the pain. Just a little bit of pain on the patient's part can cause a severe over-reaction to the point where they don't let the patient do anything for themselves. It becomes a vicious cycle."
...
|