Groundbreaking study proves via brain scan: Mindfulness exercises effectively reduce pain
Pain is a warning signal from the body. If you manage to perceive it mindfully without evaluating it negatively, the feeling of pain usually decreases significantly
© Natalia Deriabina / Westend61 / mauritius images
Mindfulness meditation is intended to help you evaluate pain less negatively and thus alleviate it. Using brain scans, researchers have now been able to demonstrate that even a short meditation exercise measurably influences how pain is processed in the brain – and reduces suffering
Mindfulness meditation is an ancient technique that involves looking at your own thoughts, feelings, and body signals without bias and staying in the present moment. Its positive effect on the body and mind has been proven by numerous studies. It can help reduce stress, anxiety, high blood pressure – and also pain.
But what exactly provides relief has so far been unclear. A common theory is that mindfulness meditation triggers the placebo effect. A groundbreaking study in the specialist magazine Biological Psychiatry now contradicts this: The effect of mindfulness exercises cannot be explained solely by the placebo effect, write the researchers from the University of California San Diego, because it goes far beyond that. It also activates other signaling pathways in the brain. This could make it an even more powerful instrument for those suffering from pain than previously thought.
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To understand: The placebo effect occurs, for example, when people are only given sham treatment (e.g. given a tablet with no active ingredient instead of a real medication) and their symptoms still improve. Apparently, the mere expectation that a treatment will help can activate the body’s self-healing powers and positively influence the perception of symptoms.
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In order to check to what extent this is also the case with mindfulness meditation, the researchers randomly divided 115 healthy test subjects into four groups. They each received different interventions: one group was instructed in mindfulness meditation, another was asked to practice particularly deep inhaling and exhaling as a kind of “mock meditation”. A third group was given what was supposed to be a “pain cream,” but it did not contain any active ingredient. The final group served as a control and listened to an audio book.
For the experiment, the test subjects were first given a painful heat stimulus on their calves. Their brains were then scanned in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner once before and once after each intervention. This device can be used to visualize which brain regions are currently active and involved in pain processing. The images were then evaluated using a computer-aided method called “multivariate pattern recognition.”
Meditation changes how the brain processes pain
The result: Both the subjects who received the cream and those who simply practiced deep breathing reported less pain than the control group. The researchers attribute this to the placebo effect. Surprisingly, however, those women and men who were instructed in mindful meditation experienced a significantly greater reduction in pain than the two placebo groups.
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In addition, the brain scan of those affected showed that meditation reduced the synchronization between areas involved in introspection, self-awareness and emotional regulation. It is assumed that the interaction of these regions creates the neuronal pain signal (NPS). In contrast, there was no significant change in the NPS system in either the control or placebo groups. Instead, other brain regions were active during the placebo effect.
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This is good news for those suffering from pain. Mindfulness meditation is about separating body signals such as pain from negative emotional evaluations. The experiment suggests that this actually works and is reflected in altered brain activity and pain relief. The researchers hope that their results can also be confirmed for chronic pain sufferers and will help to integrate mindfulness meditation even more effectively into treatment.
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“The mind is extremely powerful, and we are still working to understand how it can be harnessed for pain management,” says Fadel Zeidan, professor of anesthesiology and lead author of the study, in a Press release. “By separating pain from the self and foregoing judgment, mindfulness meditation can directly transform our experience of pain in a way that requires no medication, costs nothing, and can be practiced anywhere.”
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2024-10-04 13:44:05