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Review
. 2024 Jan 23;13(3):644.
doi: 10.3390/jcm13030644.

Personalized Multimodal Lifestyle Intervention as the Best-Evidenced Treatment for Chronic Pain: State-of-the-Art Clinical Perspective

Jo Nijs  1   2   3 , Anneleen Malfliet  1   2   4 , Eva Roose  1   2   5   6 , Astrid Lahousse  1   2   4 , Wouter Van Bogaert  1   2   4   7 , Elin Johansson  1   4   8 , Nils Runge  1   9 , Zosia Goossens  1   10 , Céline Labie  1   11 , Thomas Bilterys  1   12   13 , Jente Van Campenhout  1 , Andrea Polli  1   4   14 , Arne Wyns  1 , Jolien Hendrix  1   4   14 , Huan-Yu Xiong  1 , Ishtiaq Ahmed  1   15 , Liesbet De Baets  1 , Eva Huysmans  1   2   4
Affiliations
Review

Personalized Multimodal Lifestyle Intervention as the Best-Evidenced Treatment for Chronic Pain: State-of-the-Art Clinical Perspective

Jo Nijs et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Chronic pain is the most prevalent disease worldwide, leading to substantial disability and socioeconomic burden. Therefore, it can be regarded as a public health disease and major challenge to scientists, clinicians and affected individuals. Behavioral lifestyle factors, such as, physical (in)activity, stress, poor sleep and an unhealthy diet are increasingly recognized as perpetuating factors for chronic pain. Yet, current management options for patients with chronic pain often do not address lifestyle factors in a personalized multimodal fashion. This state-of-the-art clinical perspective aims to address this gap by discussing how clinicians can simultaneously incorporate various lifestyle factors into a personalized multimodal lifestyle intervention for individuals with chronic pain. To do so the available evidence on (multimodal) lifestyle interventions targeting physical (in)activity, stress, sleep and nutritional factors, specifically, was reviewed and synthetized from a clinical point of view. First, advise is provided on how to design a personalized multimodal lifestyle approach for a specific patient. Subsequently, best-evidence recommendations on how to integrate physical (in)activity, stress, sleep and nutritional factors as treatment targets into a personalized multimodal lifestyle approach are outlined. Evidence supporting such a personalized multimodal lifestyle approach is growing, but further studies are needed.

Keywords: chronic pain; lifestyle; nutrition; physical activity; sleep management; stress management.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
How to develop a personalized multimodal lifestyle intervention for chronic pain.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Clinical reasoning decision-making tree for designing physical activity programs within the personalized multimodal lifestyle interventions for individuals with chronic pain (modified from [54]).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Suggestion for a stepped care approach to implement cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia in patients with chronic pain and comorbid subthreshold insomnia.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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