By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Would you believe me if I told you that donating money to Pain News Network would help relieve your pain? Or that the more you gave, the more relief you’d get?

I’m a bit skeptical myself, but that’s the conclusion of an unusual UK study that found donating to charity, volunteering your time, and engaging in “prosocial behaviour” have modest pain-relieving benefits.

Researchers at the University of London and Harvard University analyzed the responses of 35,000 people to the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) from 2011 to 2020. The UKHLS is conducted annually with a broad spectrum of people across the UK, who are asked about their health, work, education, income, family, and social life.

Among the many questions asked is whether respondents volunteered or donated to a charity, and whether their physical pain interfered with their work – which was assessed using a five-point scale of 0 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). The responses of each individual were tracked over a 10-year period.

The peer-reviewed findings, published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, found a “modest correlation” between prosocial behaviour and pain relief, and suggest that the more money donated to a charity, the more physical pain was eased. Volunteering helped even more, but there was not a similar dose-dependent effect on the number of hours that were volunteered. Doing both — volunteering and donating — was the most beneficial.

Prosocial behaviour has previously been linked to better mental and physical health, but until now, no study had investigated whether it was directly linked to reductions in physical pain.

The authors believe that positive emotions associated with donating and volunteering are key to the improvement. Volunteering was found to be strongly associated with social connection, which is a key predictor of mental and physical wellbeing.

“This research contributes to the new and fast-growing literature that studies pain from a socioeconomic, psychosocial, and behavioural perspective. The work provides useful information for the design and evaluation of public health policies by uncovering how engaging in prosocial behaviour, which can create powerful positive emotions and reduce negative mood like stress, can positively affect one’s pain,” wrote lead author Lucía Macchia, PhD, a Behavioral Scientist and Lecturer in Psychology at City, University of London.

Macchia and her colleagues also found that people who donated to charity reported a slower rise in pain over time, although this effect was not found for those who volunteered.

Of course, there are going to be caveats for a study like this. The authors say “reverse causality” may have influenced the findings, because people in more pain may not physically be able to volunteer and often have fewer economic resources. Individuals who donated were more likely to be married, employed and more educated; while people who did not were more likely to be unemployed, out of the labor force, and have less income.

Researchers concluded that the emotional benefits of being “prosocial” can have a positive impact on pain and overall health.

“Taken together these findings suggest prosociality may provide a novel behavioural strategy for reducing likelihood of experiencing or developing pain interference over time. Moreover, these findings suggest that, while different prosocial behaviours may vary in potency of effects on pain, effects may be due to underlying elements common across the behaviours, including kindness, compassion, or helping toward others, rather than to any specific behaviour per se,” they reported.

I won’t claim that donating to PNN will help ease your pain, but I can honestly say that your donations help keep this website and our newsletter free for everyone. We don’t hide behind a paywall, charge for subscriptions or limit the number of free stories you can see. To do this, PNN depends on reader donations -- large and small -- to continue publishing. Your donations helped us reach nearly 550,000 readers last year, the vast majority of them people in pain.

Can you chip in just $5, $10 or $25 to help? And make it a recurring monthly donation? 

Click here or on the donate banner below.