Hi. I'm Rowe Jones, a former chronic pain sufferer. This site is all about supplying you with the latest information on chronic pain (headache, back pain, arthritis and fibromyalgia). I also want to help motivate you to help make your life a little brighter.
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Health Buzz: Meditation Is Effective at Relieving Pain
Meditation might beat morphine as a painkiller, new research suggests. In a small study, healthy medical students attended four 20-minute sessions to train them in “mindfulness meditation,” based on techniques such as focusing on breathing and banishing of distracting thoughts. Before and after the training, participants underwent brain scans with a pad heated to a painful 120 degrees attached to the back of their leg. They reported a 40 percent decrease in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness following their training. Morphine and similar drugs typically reduce pain by about 25 percent. Meditation reduced activity in key pain-processing regions of the brain, according to findings published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience. “We found a big effect,” study author Fadel Zeidan, a research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, said in a press statement. “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.”
