Pain relief and meditation have been linked before in studies, but now research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center shows through neuroimaging that even amateurs can learn to meditate effectively to provide relief.
The study was published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation," said Fadel Zeidan, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral research fellow at the center, in a release announcing the research.
To complete the study, the researchers trained 15 healthy volunteers who didn't know how to meditate, using four 20-minute classes to introduce them to "focused attention," a form of "mindfulness meditation" that keys in on breathing technique. It's a technique that has long been associated with Buddhist monks.
A special type of magnetic resonance imaging called arterial spin labeling MRI was used before and after the training sessions while the equivalent of a hot poker — a pain-inducing heat device — was placed on each participant's right calf. It heated a small area of skin to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes. Without meditation, it hurt. But the images that were taken after the participants learned the mindfulness meditation techniques showed that every one of them enjoyed decreased pain levels. The pain dropped by between 11 and 93 percent.
The release said meditation significantly reduced brain activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, which is the part of the brain that creates a sense of place and intensity for pain. When the subjects were meditating, activity in the pain-processing center was undetectable.
Meditation also increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the orbito-frontal cortex, Researcher Robert C. Coghill, senior author and associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist, said those areas of the brain "shape how the brain builds an exeprience of pain from nerve signals that are coming into the body."
"We found a big effect — about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness," Zeidan said. "Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent."
NPR's Adam Cole reported that those who "paid attention to their breathing to mimic meditation saw no significant change in pain." And an earlier study found that patients who were given fake training didn't see the pain-reducing effects, even though they believed they were performing mindfulness meditation.
So much for a placebo effect.
The Semel Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles has placed how-to videos online that teach mindfulness meditation. And "mindfulness practice, inherited from the Buddhist tradition, is increasingly being employed in Western psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and in the prevention of relapse in depression and drug addiction," according to Wikipedia's entry on mindfulness in Buddhist psychology.
Those wondering where to begin with meditation might like this video on pain management using guided meditation by Scott Gaul.
About.com has a section on use of meditation specifically for arthritis pain relief. It notes that "learning to meditate can ease muscle tension and help fight fatigue. Relaxation techniques can reduce the stress, anxiety, depression and sleeping problems that can accompany arthritis and fibromyalgia."
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