Resilience the key to tolerating pain

People who are able to accept their pain feel less pain, are more active on a daily basis and have a better mood -- and these findings hold true for men and women equally, says new research.

Resilience - a person's ability to overcome adverse circumstances - is the main quality associated with pain tolerance among patients and their adjustment to chronic pain.

The effect of gender on this ability is not as significant as originally thought, said researchers from the University of Malaga in Spain.

Researchers analysed 400 patients with chronic spinal pain (190 men and 210 women) treated in primary care centres.

They found that patients that feared pain also experienced significantly more anxiety and depression.

"More resilient individuals tend to understand that their ailment is chronic and they stop focusing on trying to get the pain to disappear and rather focus their energy on enhancing their quality of life," explained lead researcher Carmen Ramirez-Maestre.

The findings appeared in The Journal of Pain.