Poor Nutrition Linked to Higher Risk of Chronic Pain
/By Crystal Lindell
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies could play a key role in chronic pain, according to new research that found low levels of Vitamin D, B12, folate and magnesium were common in people with severe chronic pain.
The study, led by researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, analyzed health data on over 220,000 people in the National Institutes of Health’s “All of Us” Research Database. The study is the first to look at micronutrient levels of people with and without chronic pain on a large scale.
“I treat chronic pain patients, and oftentimes we don’t come up with a diagnosis. But just because there isn’t a surgery that will help you doesn’t mean you’re not in pain. It just means that our understanding of pain is limited to date,” said senior author Julie Pilitsis, MD, head of the Department of Neurosurgery at U of A College of Medicine–Tucson.
“This study is a novel way to approach chronic pain treatment, where you are looking at the patient holistically to see what could be going on systemically that is easily modifiable – changes in diet as opposed to medications or other things.”
Pilitsis and her colleagues focused on five micronutrients commonly associated with chronic pain: vitamins D, B12, and C, folate and magnesium. Nutritional data was analyzed for people without pain, those with mild-to-moderate chronic pain, and people with severe chronic pain.
They found that people with severe chronic pain were more likely to have deficiencies in vitamin D, vitamin B12, folate and magnesium. The findings, however, varied depending on gender, race and ethnicity.
“The finding that surprised us the most was that Asian females had higher vitamin B12 levels than expected,” said co-author Deborah Morris, PhD, a research laboratory manager in the Department of Neurosurgery. “Asian females with severe chronic pain had the highest vitamin B12 levels overall. We were expecting it to be lower.”
The results also varied for vitamin C, where males with mild-to-moderate or severe chronic pain were more likely to have low or borderline low levels of vitamin C, compared to males without pain.
Researchers caution that they didn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship between nutrition and pain, but they believe their findings could lead to personalized diets and nutritional supplements for people with chronic pain.
The Western Diet, which is common in the United States, is deficient in fruits and vegetables and contains high amounts of meat, refined grains, and desserts. This could contribute to nutritional imbalances and deficiencies in micronutrients.
Frustratingly, like so much medical research regarding chronic pain these days, it seems one of the primary goals of the researchers is to reduce opioid use.
“Our goal is to improve the quality of life for people with chronic pain and reduce opioid usage, and these findings have the potential to do that as part of a holistic approach to pain management,” said Morris.
Note how she doesn’t say she wants to help patients reduce ibuprofen or gabapentin use, despite the fact that both can cause serious side effects.
I’m glad to see more progress when it comes to understanding the causes of chronic pain – especially since I suffer from it – but constantly framing every advancement as a way to “reduce opioid use” is disappointing. Opioid prescriptions have already been greatly reduced to levels not seen in over 20 years.
While chronic pain patients should obviously be making sure their vitamin and mineral levels are within the normal range, my fear is that doctors will over-correct – and start pushing vitamins and supplements as alternatives to pain medication.
I myself suffered from extremely low vitamin D levels, and I do find that keeping it in the normal range helps reduce my pain levels. Holistic treatments can be a good thing, but only if they are truly holistic – encompassing both non-traditional and traditional approaches.
