Meditation can conquer pain: Well almost!

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDApr 7 2011

Meditation can be used as a powerful painkiller says new research published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center showed as much reflected in perception of the participants as well as their brain scans.

For the study an instructor taught 15 volunteers a technique called focused attention, in which one lets go of distracting thoughts and focuses on breathing. Subjects attended four 20-minute classes. Both before and after meditation training, the participants were subjected to five minutes and 55 seconds of pain in form of a heat over a small patch of skin on the subjects’ right legs to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and the subjects used a 6-inch plastic sliding scale to report their level of discomfort.

Surprisingly after the training sessions, the volunteers reported a 40% reduction in pain intensity and a 57% drop in pain unpleasantness. Morphine typically reduces pain ratings by 25%, the researchers said. MRI scans of the volunteers before meditation training showed a flurry of activity in a pain center of the brain, the primary somatosensory cortex, which all but disappeared after meditation training.

Researchers agree that every subject had some pain relief by meditating, but there was wide variability among participants - between 11% and 93%. Further, it’s difficult to draw conclusions from 15 people and the study needs to be replicated in a larger group of participants. Also the heat test is not same as severe pain say with cancer.

However what this study achieves is add to a growing body of research suggesting that even short meditation sessions can have measurable pain-relieving benefits.

“We found a big effect,” study author Fadel Zeidan, a research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, said. “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.”

The study confirms that mindfulness meditation can have a real and measurable impact on the experience of acute pain, even in people with very little formal training, Wake Forest associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy Robert C. Coghill said. He says meditation could prove useful for the management of postoperative pain and in other acute pain settings. It remains to be seen if the brief instruction can help people with chronic pain. “Meditation has been used to treat chronic pain for a long time, but patients tend to have a lot more training,” he explained. “It is not clear if the brief training sessions like the ones used in this study would be useful for these patients.”

Zeidan said meditation distracts the mind and reduces the emotional response to pain. “Many people think they are doing something wrong at first because their minds keep wandering,” he explained. “But becoming aware of how busy the mind is part of the process.”