Decreasing Pain Without Meds
November 10, 2009 by Peggy Rowland
Filed under Women's Health
When you have a headache, leg pain or any other ache, it’s so easy to reach for Tylenol. Yet, there are other options, and some of them may lie within you; no medicine cabinet required.
One new study shows that pain can be decreased with only brief training in meditation. Another study reveals that our emotions may help us deal with pain.
“We knew already that meditation has significant effects on pain perception in long-term practitioners whose brains seem to have been completely changed — we didn’t know that you could do this in just three days, with just 20 minutes a day,” said Fadel Zeidan, a doctoral candidate in psychology at UNC Charlotte and the lead author of the research reported in The Journal of Pain.
It seems that short and simple mindfulness meditation training can have strong positive effects on pain management. People in the study who practiced meditation felt less pain than the control group while meditating. They also felt less pain sensitivity even when not meditating. For this study, pain was induced by harmless electrical shocks.
Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the present, freeing your mind of worrying about events of the past or what may happen later on. Key elements include sitting still (but not stiffly) and perhaps even paying attention to your breathing.
In another study by University of Montreal researchers, people who focused on positive emotions felt less pain than those focusing on negative emotions. Once again, small electrical shocks were used to induce pain. Subjects were shown either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral images. Their reactions were recorded by fMRI.
Reseachers found that unpleasant pictures elicited stronger pain than looking at pleasant pictures. Lead author Mathieu Roy said that the findings help support using mood enhancers like photography or music to help alleviate pain. The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Have you tried meditation or music to help control pain?
(Images via stock.xchng)
That’s really interesting. I have heard of using music to decrease pain, especially classical music. I’ve also heard that focusing on a pleasant image helps too.
Kirsten, I’m currently reading a book (Be the Change) on meditation to review here, so maybe you can check back for more on that angle as well.
I wish more people would condition meditation for relief of stress related problems. It really does work and doesn’t cost nearly as much as drugs.