Coffee, a natural pain reliever. Science says so

Regular consumption of coffee or other caffeinated beverages helps to cope with pain better. The new study.

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More coffee, less pain: a greater habitual consumption of caffeine would be related to a lower sensitivity to physical suffering. Caffeine is already used in acute pain treatments (it is, for example, an ingredient in some headache medications), but would its higher consumption in the diet make people feel less pain?

Some psychologists led by Burel Goodin of the University of Alabama in Birmingham have tried to answer this question, coming to a conclusion: regular consumption of coffee or other caffeinated beverages helps to better tolerate pain and raise the tolerance threshold.

“The most consumed psychoactive substance in the world”, as the UAB researchers define caffeine in the article published in the journal Psychopharmacology, would also be associated with a higher pain threshold. Not only, therefore, useful for protecting the heart or to reduce the risk of diabetes, coffee would also be a boon for those who cannot stand pain.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers recruited 62 participants between the ages of 19 and 77 and asked them to record their daily caffeine consumption for seven days. They estimated an average caffeine consumption of 170 milligrams per day for the whole sample (the highest was 643,6 milligrams per day), equal to about two cups of coffee, even if 15% of the participants consumed over 400 milligrams per day. caffeine day. The scholars then conducted a classic test to measure the individual pain threshold: the volunteers were stimulated on the forearm with the application of heat and pressure at increasing and decreasing intensities and were asked to tell when the pain was unbearable and when it returned to being. a tolerable annoyance.

Well, it turns out that, while taking into account other factors that can influence the pain threshold, such as alcohol consumption or smoking, the individual's ability to bear it grows as daily caffeine consumption increases.

Previous studies had already shown that caffeine blocks receptors for the neurotransmitter adenosine, which interferes with pain signaling. This study "provides new evidence suggesting that higher levels of habitual caffeine consumption in the diet can alter the nociceptive [the process by which an injurious stimulus is perceived at the peripheral level by nociceptors (peripheral nerve endings)] of signal processing of pain, ”the authors write.

Further studies are needed, they note, to understand for example the level of tolerance to caffeine due to regular use. Meanwhile, coffee remains a pleasant habit which, if limited to a few cups a day, can only lift us at least in mood! Here are 3 pros and 3 cons of a cup of coffee!