Are you in a physical pain? You might want then to start meditating.
But why?
Among all the already known benefits that meditation can bring, have been discovered by some researchers, that meditation can reduce pain without the natural production of opioids, the body’s main way of blocking pain.
By the way, if you have never meditated, you might wonder now what are the other benefits of meditation, in that case, you can read my previous post on the importance and benefits of meditation.
Here is the study on Mindfulness-Meditation and Pain relief.
A team of researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in North Carolina carried out a series of experiments where:
1 mindfulness meditation
2 a drug called naloxone, which blocks the pain-reducing effect of opioids,
3 and a placebo
were used in different combinations to test their effectiveness of mindfulness on pain relief.
In the study, 78 participants were divided into four groups.
One group received meditation and naloxone,
a second group got meditation with a placebo,
a third had no meditation and naloxone
and the final group only received a placebo.
The pain was inflicted through a thermal probe, which heated the participants to 49C.
Participants were then asked to rate how painful the heat was on a sliding scale.
These are the results of the Study on Mindfulness-Meditation and Pain relief.
Researchers found there was a 24% reduction in pain in the meditation/naloxone group from the baseline measurement.
It was reduced by 21% in the meditation/placebo group.
In the non-meditation groups, pain increased regardless of receiving placebo or the naloxone.
As a result, mindfulness meditation could be used as a therapy for pain relief, especially in those who have built up tolerance to opiate-based drugs, scientists say.
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