According to a new study, the stress caused by financial problems could cause physical pain decades later.
- According to the researchers, there is a psychosocial cause for the pain. This is the conclusion they drew from their study, based on the follow-up of 500 families over a period of 27 years.
- They found that there was a link between financial hardship and physical pain felt 30 years later. They also found that stressful experiences, such as financial constraints, erode psychological resources such as feelings of control once one is older.
Can the stress generated by the fear of not being able to pay your rent or your bills at the end of the month lead to physical pain much later, when you have become a senior?
This is the conclusion reached by researchers at the University of Georgia, in the United States. In a study published in the journal Stress & Healththey explain that financial stress experienced in midlife is associated with a decreased sense of control in old age, which increases physical pain.
“Physical pain is considered a disease in its own right with three major components: biological, psychological and social, details Kandauda Wickrama, professor at the College of Family and Consumer Sciences and lead author. In older people, it coexists with other health problems such as limited physical functioning, loneliness and cardiovascular disease.”
Pain as a biopsychosocial phenomenon
To understand how stressful family experiences might impact pain, the researchers used data from the Iowa Youth and Family Project, a longitudinal study that provides 27 years of data on rural families living in Iowa. The data was collected in real time from the husbands and wives of 500 families who experienced financial problems related to the agricultural crisis of the late 1980s. Most of these people are now over 65 and the couples are married for a long time, some for 45 years.
Analyzing the data, the researchers found a link between the family’s financial difficulties in the early 1990s and the physical pain felt almost three decades later. And this, even after taking into account other data such as other physical illnesses, family income and the age of the participants.
According to Professor Wickrama, these results clearly show that physical pain is a biopsychosocial phenomenon. “Research suggests that stressful experiences, like financial strain, erode psychological resources like feelings of control. This depletion of resources activates regions of the brain that are sensitive to stress, triggering pathological, physiological and neurological processes that lead to health conditions such as physical pain, physical limitations, loneliness and cardiovascular disease”he develops.
Among the symptoms directly attributed to stress, the expert notes memory loss, bodily pain and lack of social ties. “Nearly two-thirds of adults complain of some type of body pain, and almost as many complain of loneliness. This percentage is increasing, and the health costs associated with it are rising. public health”concludes Professor Wickrama.
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