Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor • April 2019 • News And Events

At work, it’s healthier and more productive to just be yourself, according to a new study from Rice University, Texas A&M University, the University of Memphis, Xavier University, Portland State University and the University of California, Berkeley.

The study, “Stigma Expression Outcomes and Boundary Conditions: A Meta-Analysis” will appear in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Business and Psychology. It examines 65 studies focusing on what happens after people in a workplace disclose a stigmatized identity, such as sexual orientation, mental illness, physical disability or pregnancy.

Eden King, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of psychology at Rice, said the decision to express a stigmatized identity is highly complicated.

“It has the potential for both positive and negative consequences,” she said.

However, the research overwhelmingly indicates that people with non-visible stigmas (such as sexual orientation or health problems) who live openly at work are happier with their overall lives and more productive in the workplace. King said self-disclosure is typically a positive experience because it allows people to improve connections, form relationships with others and free their minds of unwanted thoughts.

Workers who expressed their non-visible stigmas experienced decreased job anxiety, decreased role ambiguity, improved job satisfaction and increased commitment to their position. Outside of work, these workers reported decreased psychological stress and increased satisfaction with their lives.

But the study found that the same results did not apply to people with visible traits, such as race, gender and physical disability.

“Identities that are immediately observable operate differently than those that are concealable,” King said. “The same kinds of difficult decisions about whether or not to disclose the identity – not to mention the questions of to whom, how, when and where to disclose those identities – are probably less central to their psychological experiences.”

King said that because most people appreciate gaining new information about others, the expression of visible stigmas is likely to be less impactful.

“Also, people react negatively to those who express or call attention to stigmas that are clearly visible to others, such as race or gender, as this may be seen as a form of advocacy or heightened pride in one’s identity,” she said.

The researchers said more work needs to be done to understand the motivations for expressing different stigmas. They hope this meta-analysis will be used to help workplaces and policymakers protect individuals with stigmas from discrimination.

A new study (“Pinning to Cope: Using Pinterest for Chronic Pain Management) analyzed 502 posts on Pinterest about chronic pain and revealed that the social media platform is helping people with chronic pain cope by sharing self-care and pain-management tips, venting about their pain’s severity, and supporting others who are similarly suffering.

The study also suggests that Pinterest is an underutilized tool that health care and public health organizations could use to distribute high-quality, reputably sourced information about chronic pain, a condition that the National Institutes of Health estimates affects one out of every five U.S. adults.

The study was published in the journal Health Education & Behavior and was led by Jeanine Guidry, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture, and Eric Benotsch, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences.

Of the 502 posts, or pins, the researchers analyzed, nearly all (98.6 per cent) referred in some way to the severity of chronic pain. Roughly one-third (32.9 per cent) expressed a high level of perceived benefit for self-care, while 10 per cent described a high level of barriers to self-care.

Tips for chronic pain management were present in 35.3 per cent of posts, while tips for caregivers or friends were present in 17.9 per cent.

Just under 22 per cent mentioned a specific disease associated with chronic pain, and of these fibromyalgia was mentioned most frequently (13.3 per cent of all posts), followed by arthritis (6.4 per cent).

Almost half the sample (47.4 per cent) referred in some way to problem- focused coping, while only 15.7 per cent dealt with emotion- focused coping.

Nearly a quarter (22.9 per cent) of all posts were primarily venting about chronic pain, while 14.9 per cent were humorous and just 5 per cent focused on acceptance of the condition.

“Our findings show that, first of all, people are talking about chronic pain on Pinterest,” Guidry said. “But second of all, our findings show that the vast majority of posts were by individuals.”

Relatively few of the posts originated with health care or public health organizations, but the study suggests that Pinterest could be an effective way to communicate with people with chronic pain, who statistically have a higher level of isolation in their lives and may be looking online for reliable information and effective coping strategies.

“Pinterest is used by organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization but not nearly as much as, say, Facebook and Twitter,” Guidry said.

One notable finding in the study is that Pinterest posts about chronic pain saw a higher level of engagement than other studies of health-related content on the platform by Guidry and her colleagues.

“The only other study where we found higher engagement was when we studied depression-focused posts on Pinterest,” Guidry said. “I think that may be because, like with chronic pain, [those posts] are dealing with coping as opposed to dealing with information about say, an infectious disease.”

Guidry said the study’s findings are encouraging because they suggest that people with chronic pain are frequently posting about healthy coping mechanisms and other people are engaging with those posts.

Keeping physically and mentally active in middle age may be tied to a lower risk of developing dementia decades later, according to a study published in the medical journal Neurology.

The study involved 800 Swedish women with an average age of 47 who were followed for 44 years. At the beginning of the study, participants were asked about their mental and physical activities.

Mental activities included intellectual activities, such as reading and writing; artistic activities, such as going to a concert or singing in a choir; manual activities, such as needlework or gardening; club activities; and religious activity.

Participants were given scores in each of the five areas based on how often they participated in mental activities, with a score of zero for no or low activity, one for moderate activity and two for high activity. For example, moderate artistic activity was defined as attending a concert, play or art exhibit during the last six months, while high artistic activity was defined as more frequent visits, playing an instrument, singing in a choir or painting. The total score possible was 10.

Participants were divided into two groups. The low group, with 44 per cent of participants, had scores of zero to two and the high group, with 56 per cent of participants, had scores of three to 10.

For physical activity, participants were divided into two groups: active and inactive. The active group ranged from light physical activity such as walking, gardening, bowling or biking for a minimum of four hours per week to regular intense exercise such as running or swimming several times a week or engaging in competitive sports. A total of 17 per cent of the participants were in the inactive group and 82 per cent were in the active group.

During the study, 194 women developed dementia. Of those, 102 had Alzheimer’s disease, 27 had vascular dementia and 41 had mixed dementia, which is when more than one type of dementia is present, such as the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s disease along with the blood vessel changes seen in vascular dementia.

The study found that women with a high level of mental activities were 46 per cent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and 34 per cent less likely to develop dementia overall than the women with the low level of mental activities. The women who were physically active were 52 per cent less likely to develop dementia with cerebrovascular disease and 56 per cent less likely to develop mixed dementia than the women who were inactive.

The researchers took into account other factors that could affect the risk of dementia, such as high blood pressure, smoking and diabetes. They also ran the results again after excluding women who developed dementia about halfway through the study to rule out the possibility that those women may have been in the prodromal stage of dementia, with less participation in the activities as an early symptom. The results were similar, except that physical activity was then associated with a 34 per cent reduced risk of dementia overall.

Of the 438 women with the high level of mental activity, 104 developed dementia, compared to 90 of the 347 women with the low level of activity. Of the 648 women with the high level of physical activity, 159 developed dementia, compared to 35 of the 137 women who were inactive.

Workers suffering from chronic pain takes an immense toll on both employees and employers. Whether the pain that individuals experience is physical or psychological, constant or intermittent, or caused by work conditions or brought to the job, its effect on their productivity and wellbeing is a huge problem. Not surprisingly, work and pain are the subjects of a growing body of research, as technological advances transform healthcare at the same time as they created new challenges.

Understanding the interaction between work and pain is an important focus of WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation. WORK’s scope covers the entire occupation of work and presents evidence and best practices to help manage illnesses, injuries, and disabilities through interventions, rehabilitation, and treatment.

To that end, WORK has published a special collection of seven new research articles on work and pain. In her editorial introducing this issue, Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor Karen Jacobs noted that since 2008, WORK has published more than 20,000 research articles and reviews on the subject, which represents “more pain-related articles than any of the ‘recognized’ pain journals.”

Each of the articles in the special issue looks at the interplay of work, stress, and pain across diverse job roles, industries, and geographic locations including the United States, Scotland, Iran, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia. Findings suppor t the following conclusions:

• Higher levels of presenteeism (being present at work in body but not mind) are associated with lower back pain

• Repetitive work, heavy lifting, and limited rest increase discomfort from common musculoskeletal conditions

• Workers (especially older individuals) often fail to disclose their chronic knee pain for fear of losing their jobs

• Job stress is linked to chronic pain, with psychological symptoms intensifying physical ones. Interestingly, that study noted that employees without chronic pain sometimes begin to think catastrophically about physical pain as their stress level ramps up. Female allied health professionals and those with chronic musculoskeletal conditions are more susceptible to depression and anxiety as a result of job stress.

Two of the articles highlight challenges and opportunities that technology brings to the dynamic relationship of work and pain. Using one of today’s most essential business tools, a smartphone, puts users’ necks at risk when they make calls or send texts, according to Rose Boucaut, DEd, MPH, at the School of Health Sciences (Physiotherapy) University of South Australia, iCAHE (International Centre for Allied Health Evidence), Adelaide, Australia.

“Smartphone users typically bend their neck slightly forward when reading and writing text messages. They also sometimes bend or twist their neck sideways when speaking and put their upper body and legs in awkward positions. These postures put uneven pressure on the soft tissues around the spine and can lead to persistent discomfort,” Boucaut explained.

This observation is based on the results of a study on which she collaborated with a team of investigators led by Suwalee Namwongsa, PhD, Research Center in Back, Neck, Other Joint Pain, and Human Performance (BNOJPH), and School of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Associated Medical Sciences, Khon Kaen University in Thailand.

They conducted a cross-sectional survey study of 779 Thai university students and found that MSK disorders are more common among the students who used smartphones for five or more hours a day. (Other significant factors included smoking and an insufficient amount of exercise.)

Nearly a third of the students reported neck pain, more than a quarter of them reported shoulder pain, and a fifth either upper back pain or wrist/hand pain. Significantly more (71 per cent) of the women in the study group experienced musculoskeletal pain than men (28 per cent).

“It is doubtful whether people experiencing back and neck pain, especially young people, are aware that it could be the result of excessive smartphone use. Health practitioners need to educate their patients about safe postures and curtailing time spent using smartphones to help prevent these issues,” said Dr. Namwongsa.

She added that many smartphone companies notify customers of the average time they spend daily on their phones, feedback that “may help users connect neck discomfort with smartphone use and encourage them to be mindful of their posture and time on the phone. In addition, healthcare providers can develop preventive initiatives that discourage flexed necks and other problematic positions (as well as smoking).”

Another featured article in the collection zeroes in on how a technology can be fine-tuned to better manage lower back pain, a chronic condition that causes presenteeism and impedes workplace performance.

This study investigated the effects of pivotal whole body vibration on an individual’s proprioception (awareness of the body’s positions and movements), which has potential application in treating musculoskeletal conditions such as lower back pain.