To illustrate, in 2020, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) announced the importance of optimizing dietary intake in pain management strategies as a large body of evidence indicated significant effects of dietary interventions (e.g., through targeting an improvement of overall diet quality) on pain reduction.
Our research group has collaborations with national and international researchers, and we aim to highlight the necessity to consider diet quality as a modifiable lifestyle factor in chronic pain management. With the great Research and Development (R&D) strategies in our clinical setting, we are currently working with integrating nutrition care in pain management.
Our national and international collaborations include:
• Research network in National Pain Registry. We investigate whether and how lifestyle factors including nutrition factors, influence the effects of pain rehabilitation.
• Department of Biosciences and Nutrition and the IMPACT research group, Karolinska Institute (Prof. Marie Löf and Dr Maria Henström). We develop mhealth support nutrition care for patients with chronic pain.
• Hunter Integrated Pain Service, John Hunter Hospital, Australia (Dr Katherine Brain and Dr Chris Hayes); Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Food & Nutrition (F&N) Research program, University of Newcastle, Australia (Professor Clare Collins, Professor Tracy Burrows and Dr Rebecca Collins). We collaborate for pain & nutrition projects with focus on clinical epidemiology and interventions.
• Department of physiotherapy, University Bournemouth University, UK (Dr Elma Omer). We work with evidence-based mechanisms of nutrition interacting with chronic pain.
