Exercise therapy is one of the best methods for helping patients to reduce or eliminate many forms of acute or chronic pain. It can help patients strengthen muscles, increase joint range and achieve a state of physical fitness that allows them to perform everyday activities without pain or discomfort.

For many years, experts warned pain patients to rest and avoid exercise. At the time, the consensus was that too much physical activity would further damage joints and muscles, causing pain to worsen. However, experts now understand that exercise actually helps relieve chronic pain by strengthening muscles and other tissue and increasing a patient’s flexibility.

Exercise also causes the body to release chemicals such as endorphins and enkephalins, which block pain signals from reaching the brain and can help alleviate anxiety and depression. These emotions can make pain more difficult to manage. Exercise gives pain patients increased energy and helps them sleep better. It also helps patients maintain a healthy weight, which reduces the stress on joints and increases bone mass, which leaves patients less susceptible to injury.

Exercise offers health benefits for people regardless of whether or not they are suffering from pain. However, exercise programs can have special benefits for those suffering from various types of pain, including:

• Back pain. Exercise can help speed recovery from back problems and increase flexibility and strength so that injuries do not recur in the future. Exercise may also reduce back muscle spasms and hydrate intervertebral discs that become painful when they lose fluid. Back pain is usually treated by non–weight bearing exercises.
  
  
• Fibromyalgia. This condition is a chronic pain syndrome, predominantly affecting women, in which non–painful stimuli are translated by the central nervous system into pain. Studies show that aerobic exercise, such as swimming, walking or running improves muscle fitness and reduces muscle pain and tenderness. Exercise can also improve muscle endurance.
  
  
• Headaches. Exercises such as regular swimming can reduce the frequency and severity of migraine headaches.
  
  
• Neck and shoulder pain. Flexibility and strength exercises can increase the fitness of neck and shoulder muscles and reduce pain in those areas.
  
  
• Arthritis. Exercise strengthens muscles around joints, which allows the joints to pull apart and reduce the grinding that leads to further joint deterioration and pain. Exercise for arthritis often includes range–of–motion exercises to reduce stiffness and endurance exercises to reduce inflammation in joints.