Practising mindfulness can reduce pain in a way that is different to the placebo effect on pain, a new study has found.
Mindfulness meditation is an ancient technique that involves examining your thoughts in a non-judgemental way and living in the present moment. It is thought it can help with stress, anxiety, chronic pain and high blood pressure.
The effectiveness of mindfulness meditation when it comes to reducing pain has been thought to be down to the placebo effect, which is when a ‘fake’ treatment brings about improvements in health – when expectations have an effect on experience.
However, new research by the University of California San Diego School of Medicine suggests that in terms of reducing pain, mindfulness engages a specific brain pathway separate to that which comes into play when a placebo is used.
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Corresponding author Fadel Zeidan, professor of anesthesiology, said: “The mind is extremely powerful, and we’re still working to understand how it can be harnessed for pain management.
“By separating pain from the self and relinquishing evaluative judgment, mindfulness meditation is able to directly modify how we experience pain in a way that uses no drugs, costs nothing and can be practiced anywhere.”
The research involved 115 participants who were divided into four groups and given one of four interventions: a guided mindfulness meditation, a sham mindfulness meditation (just deep breathing), a placebo cream they were told reduced pain, and a control group which was given an audiobook.
To measures the effectiveness of each intervention on pain relief, participants had a painful but harmless heat stimulus applied to their calves, while undergoing an MRI scan of their brain.
The imaging identified the brain areas which engaged when pain relief was linked to mindfulness meditation compared to pain relief linked to the placebo.
The researchers found that mindfulness meditation was linked to significantly greater reductions in pain intensity compared to any of the other interventions.
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Professor Zeidan said: “It has long been assumed that the placebo effect overlaps with brain mechanisms triggered by active treatments, but these results suggest that when it comes to pain, this may not be the case.
“Instead, these two brain responses are completely distinct, which supports the use of mindfulness meditation as a direct intervention for chronic pain rather than as a way to engage the placebo effect.
“Millions of people are living with chronic pain every day, and there may be more these people can do to reduce their pain and improve their quality of life than we previously understood.
“We are excited to continue exploring the neurobiology of mindfulness and how we can leverage this ancient practice in the clinic.”
Read the study in Biological Psychiatry.
