Cardio decreases pain?

[jurke]

I have noticed that on days where my shoulder pain is really acting up, 20 minutes of low intensity cardio seems to "magically" decrease my pain pretty substantially. Pain typically comes back in the following hours where activity is decreased but during that cardiovascular activity it feels great.

I then came across this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7015025/

Is there some sort of simple to understand explanation for this?

[Michael Ray]

I have noticed that on days where my shoulder pain is really acting up, 20 minutes of low intensity cardio seems to "magically" decrease my pain pretty substantially. Pain typically comes back in the following hours where activity is decreased but during that cardiovascular activity it feels great.

I then came across this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7015025/

Is there some sort of simple to understand explanation for this?

jurke - thanks for the question. This is likely a bit more of an involved discussion than what appears superficially. For a detailed discussion on the topic, see HERE. Physical activity can decrease pain for some in some scenarios but can also increase the experience for others. We aren't entirely sure why in this context physical activity decreases pain experiences, albeit there are some thoughts such as the endogenous-opioid system. However, physical activity is likely also subject to the same placebo-like contextual effects we've discussed elsewhere.