Meditating to relieve pain may be healthier than other techniques because it doesn't use the body's natural production of opiates, new findings suggest.
These findings are interesting because previous studies reveal that other cognitive-based approaches like hypnosis, acupuncture, and distraction harness the endogenous opioid system to reduce pain. Researchers believe the latest findings provide valuable insight into solving the current prescription painkiller epidemic.
"Our finding was surprising and could be important for the millions of chronic pain sufferers who are seeking a fast-acting, non-opiate-based therapy to alleviate their pain," said lead researcher Fadel Zeidan.
Researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center conducted a study of 78 healthy, pain-free volunteers who were divided into four different groups: meditation plus naloxone; non-meditation control plus naloxone; meditation plus saline placebo; or non-meditation control plus saline placebo.
Researchers explain that the drug naloxone blocks the pain-reducing effects of opioids.
For the four-day study, researchers induced pain by using a thermal probe to heat a small part of the participants' skin to 49 degrees Centigrade or 120.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Participants were then asked to rate the pain using a sliding scale.
Researchers found that the meditation group who received the naloxone experienced a 24 percent pain reduction from baseline and those in the meditation group who received the placebo experienced a 21 percent pain reduction from baseline. In contrast, participants in both the non-meditation groups reported increases in pain.
Study results revealed meditation significantly reduced pain even when the body's opioid receptors were chemically blocked. Researchers said the findings suggest that meditation reduces pain by using a different pathway.
"Our team has demonstrated across four separate studies that meditation, after a short training period, can reduce experimentally induced pain. And now this study shows that meditation doesn't work through the body's opioid system," said Zeidan. "This study adds to the growing body of evidence that something unique is happening with how meditation reduces pain. These findings are especially significant to those who have built up a tolerance to opiate-based drugs and are looking for a non-addictive way to reduce their pain."
"At the very least, we believe that meditation could be used in conjunction with other traditional drug therapies to enhance pain relief without it producing the addictive side effects and other consequences that may arise from opiate drugs," he concluded.
The findings are published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
