Sensory information can decrease cold-induced pain perception

Specific terms are often used to describe the pain athletes typically experience during cold treatments. It is not clear whether providing athletes with such descriptive sensory information will decrease their perceived pain during treatments. The purpose of this study was to determine if subjects' perceptions of cold-induced pain could be influenced by the type of information provided before treatment, such as "pain will be cursing" or "pain will be flickering." Ninety Division I intercollegiate athletes were randomly assigned to one of five groups: traditional terms (cold, burning, aching, numbness), high-level terms (freezing, crushing, pounding, heavy), moderate-level terms (cold, gnawing, pulsing, aching), or low-level terms (cool, pinching, flickering, dull) from the McGill Pain Questionnaire, or no terms at all (control). The four groups that received a set of terms were told that those terms described the sensations they would feel during cold immersion of the ankle. Pain was measured with the McGill Pain Questionnaire every 3 minutes during a 21-minute immersion (1 degrees C) of the foot and ankle. Sensory, affective, evaluative, and miscellaneous pain measures were derived. The control group experienced greater sensory and affective pain than did any of the other groups and experienced greater evaluative pain than did the groups receiving low-level or traditional terms. We conclude that providing athletes with some type of sensory information to describe their cold-pain experience will decrease their perceived pain during cold immersion, although it does not seem to matter what terms are used.