Short, low-intensity workouts deliver biggest pain relief, researchers say

A comprehensive analysis by researchers at Adelaide University suggests that exercise is a powerful, underutilized tool for pain management.

Examining 157 systematic reviews covering over 221,000 participants across 2,736 trials, the study found that exercise effectively reduces both acute and chronic pain across various conditions, including osteoarthritis, migraines, and cancer-related pain.

Crucially, the findings challenge the idea that longer or harder workouts are necessary, SciTechDailylink text reports.

Lower-intensity, shorter-duration programs – even totaling under two hours per week - delivered the greatest pain reductions.

On average, exercise reduced pain by 1.1 points on a 10-point scale, outperforming average pain relief metrics reported for common medications in separate trials by roughly 60%.

Lead researcher Dr. Ben Singh explained that exercise triggers biological pathways that release endorphins and serotonin, calms inflammation, and alters how the brain processes pain.

Senior researcher Professor Carol Maher emphasized that these findings support incorporating specific, structured exercise regimens as a core component of multimodal clinical pain care rather than simply advising patients to “stay active.”