Originally published September 22 2005
Positive thinking can overcome pain, study suggests
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Positive thinking may be able to help people overcome pain, according to a study by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center researchers that found patients who were given placebos and who expected less pain, felt less pain, Senior Journal reports.
It could be good news for senior citizens, many living with pain, who are concerned about the recent health warnings on many commonly used pain-relieving drugs.
The latest study is new brain imaging research done at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
"We found that expectations have a surprisingly big effect on pain.
The study involved 10 normal, healthy volunteers who had a heat stimulator applied to their legs while their brains were being scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technology that shows which areas of the brain are being activated.
In a training session, researchers taught participants to expect three different levels of painful heat stimuli after a timed interval.
A seven-second interval signaled a heat level that caused mild pain (115 degrees Fahrenheit), a 15-second interval signaled a heat level that produced moderate pain (118 degrees) and a 30-second interval signaled a heat level that produced severe pain (122 degrees).
About a third of the time, the researchers mixed the signals for the pain levels, so that participants were expecting one temperature, but actually received either a higher or lower temperature.
When participants expecting moderate pain were exposed to the severe heat level, their ratings of pain intensity were 28 percent lower than on the trials where they were expecting a high level of pain and actually received it.
Brain regions activated during expectations of pain overlapped partially with those activated during pain, which suggests that there is are crucial brain regions that allow expectations to shape the processing of information from the body.
"We don't experience pain in a vacuum," Coghill said.
About Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center: Wake Forest Baptist is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university's School of Medicine.
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