14 DAY TRIAL // In a new scientific study, it was revealed that meditation carries a considerable influence over how much pain the human body can feel. It was revealed that the emotional impact the sensation usually has is significantly diminished in patients who meditate on a regular basis. One of the main reasons why this happens, researchers say, is because these individuals are so focused on anticipating the future and becoming one with the present, that their brains simply anticipate less pain, LiveScience reports.
“The results suggest that meditation doesn't change the raw sensory experience of pain, but rather reduces the emotional response that occurs when pain is anticipated. This in itself appears to be enough to reduce the unpleasantness of the experienced pain, even though the sensory experience is unchanged. Meditation trains the brain to be more present-focused and therefore to spend less time anticipating future negative events. This may be why meditation is effective at reducing the recurrence of depression, which makes chronic pain considerably worse,” explains University of Manchester expert Christopher Brown, who was a part of the team behind the new study.
The investigation was conducted on 12 volunteer participants, of which some had decades-long experiences with meditation, whereas others had no training of this sort. The research team was interested in learning how meditation can be employed in treating chronic illnesses, as the method could prove to be of great use to people suffering from arthritis, for example. Though the experience varied among test participants, the concept of “mindfulness meditation” was at the core of their practices, the researchers announce. During the experiment, the scientists monitored the patients' brains, as the cortices anticipated the presence of pain.
It was found that those who have been practicing meditation for many years, as much as three to four decades, were a lot less likely to experience the full negative side-effects of pain when a stimuli was applied. For people with no training in meditation, age was not a relevant factor in determining their resistance to pain. Details of the new investigation appear in the May 20 online issue of the respected scientific journal Pain.
“One might argue that if a therapy works, then why should we care how it works? But it may be surprising to learn that the mechanisms of action of many current therapies are largely unknown, a fact that hinders the development of new treatments. Understanding how meditation works would help improve this method of treatment and help in the development of new therapies. There may also be some types of patient with chronic pain who benefit more from meditation-based therapies than others,” says UM neurorheumatologist Anthony Jones.