Mindfulness, or mindfulness meditation, can be an effective way to relieve chronic pain, according to a recent study published in the journal PAIN, in this regard, several studies have already shown that the practice of mindfulness relieves pain, for example, a study published in the journal JAMA found that mindfulness can relieve chronic pain, especially lower back pain , even more effectively than standard treatments.
Another study published in Frontiers In Psychology also found that mindfulness meditation helps injured athletes improve their awareness and pain tolerance.
- Another study also found that people with chronic inflammatory diseases.
- Such as rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease.
- In which psychological stress plays an important role.
- May benefit from mindfulness meditation techniques.
However, what brain mechanisms are responsible for this analgesic effect?This topic is addressed in new research by Fadel Zeidan, assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Zeidan explains that mindfulness meditation is about being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment. Some people are more aware than others and these people seem to feel less pain.
What the researchers wanted to see was whether people’s innate and individual predisposition to mindfulness correlated with less sensitivity to pain and, if so, what brain mechanisms were working.
To find out, the researchers studied 76 people who had never meditated before. Their levels of mindfulness were assessed through the Freiburg Mind Care Inventory. This test evaluates the non-identification of thoughts and feelings, acceptance, openness, lack of response and understanding of mental processes. and observing the present moment.
Researchers subsequently administered painful thermal stimulation and painless stimulation to participants, using a functional MRI to study their brain activities. Researchers based on the hypothesis that the “Mindfulness” trait or a person’s predisposition to being conscious would correlate with lower sensitivity. to pain and less activation of a brain circuit called a network in standard mode.
The standard network includes several areas of the brain that are interconnected and active at rest, that is, when a person does not pay attention to the outside world, which stimulates attention, focuses on their internal states. Areas of the brain that make up this network include the posterior cingulate cortex, median prefrontal cortex, and angular convolution.
Meditation is known to involve an exercise in attention in immediate experience, moving away from distractions, such as self-referential thinking and wandering mind.
According to this view, meditation has been associated with relatively low activity in a network of regions of the brain involved in a self-referential treatment known as the default network or DMN (default network acronyms) in experienced meditators compared to non-meditators.
Similarly, the wandering mind has been related to activity in the DMN. In turn, reducing DMN activity during meditation was associated with better care maintained outside the exam. Previous research suggests that meditation plays an important role in reducing network treatment in a standard way when exercising.
The new study found that better knowledge of the characteristics was correlated with less activation of the posterior cingulate cortex; on the other hand, people who reported feeling more pain also showed increased activity in this area. Zeidan explains this by saying that the default mode is disabled when performing any type of task, such as reading or writing.
In addition, he says, the network in standard mode reactivates each time the individual stops performing a task and returns to thoughts, feelings and emotions related to himself.
“The results of our study showed that conscious people seem less attached to the experience of pain, which was associated with fewer reports of pain,” Zeidan explains. He adds: “We now have new ammunition to attack this region of the brain in effective pain therapies. “
Researchers hope the results will help relieve people with chronic pain. “According to our previous research, we know that we can increase attention during relatively short periods of conscious meditation training, so that it becomes an effective way to relieve the pain of millions of people suffering from chronic pain. “
Now that you know mindfulness relieves pain, what are you waiting for to include this practice in your daily life?