Dancers more in-tune with their pain

Professional dancers appear to be more precise in their estimation of pain, showing lower variability in reported pain intensity, a recent study has found.

“[D]ancers demonstrated better interoception sensibility and less pain variability than did nondancers, and senior dancers had lower variability than juniors,” the researchers said. “Based on the current results … we can hypothesize that dancers, and perhaps other professional athletes, will demonstrate lower placebo response and reduced day-to-day fluctuations in clinical pain.”

The study included 33 professional dancers who were made to complete the focused analgesia selection test (FAST), which quantifies pain report variability. Participants also underwent a taste task designed to similarly assess variability in taste intensity reports. A parallel group of 33 age-matched nondancer controls was also included.

Compared to controls, dancers showed a significantly lower mean pain intensity score across all pain stimuli taken together (25.91±12.6 vs 39.41±21.3; p=0.009).

The R² factor, indicative of the concordance between the actual and predicted pain scores, was marginally higher in dancers (p=0.095). The intraclass coefficient, on the other hand, was used to measure consistency in responses over the same repeated stimulus.

Relative to controls, dancers scored significantly higher (0.69±0.1 vs 0.60±0.18; p=0.013). Both findings suggested that variability in reporting was lower in dancers. On the other hand, no between-group differences were reported for the taste task.