Pain Intensity Is Controlled by Our Internal Clock

As with many of the body's functions, pain intensity is controlled by our internal clock. This is what a team of Inserm researchers at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (Inserm/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1/CNRS) has recently discovered. They show that pain oscillates over 24 hours with a peak at night and a decrease in the afternoon, regardless of the sleep-wake cycle or any external stimulation. This discovery could lead to new approaches to how we treat pain. Their research has been published in Brain . An internal clock set to a rhythm of around 24 hours regulates the activity level of numerous body functions: the sleep/wake system, body temperature, blood pressure, hormone production, heart rate, but also cognitive capacities, mood, and memory. To this long list, we can now add pain.