Practicing Meditation for Pain Management

posted on Jul 12 by Jessica in the Disability News, Health, Interesting Links, Wheelchair Accessibility category

Meditation is the act of engaging in thought or contemplation, by appealing to a feeling or internal state such as compassion or attending to a specific focal point. It is an internal practice which an individual can do by themselves or in a religious setting, and now a recent study offers proof that meditation produces powerful pain relieving effects in the brain.

In the study, 15 healthy participants were selected to attend four 20-minute classes to learn the meditation technique called “Focused Attention” — a form of mindfulness, where the participant is taught to take deep breaths and let go of any distracting thoughts or emotions.

The participants’ brain activity was examined using arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging (ASL MRI), which is different from the standard MRI in that it captures longer durations of brain processes like meditation. To induce a reaction during the brain scans, a heat device was placed on the participants right leg and heated a small area to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which most would find painful over a 5-minute time period. The scan results showed that meditation reduced brain activity in the somatosensory cortex, which is the area of the brain involved with creating the feeling of where and how intense the pain is.

“We found a big effect — about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent,” said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “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.”

Researchers believe that meditation has great potential for clinical use, because little training is required to produce such dramatic pain-relieving effects. “This study shows that meditation produces real effects in the brain and can provide an effective way for people to substantially reduce their pain without medications,” Zeidan said.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110405174835.htm
themeditationresource.com/
ksdk.com/news/article/253154/9/Study-Meditation-can-ease-pain-more-effectively-than-drugs