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'Mindful People' Feel Less Pain, Study Finds (medicalxpress.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the open-minded dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Medical Xpress: Ever wonder why some people seem to feel less pain than others? A study conducted at Wake Forest School of Medicine may have found one of the answers -- mindfulness. The researchers analyzed data obtained from a study published in 2015 that compared mindfulness meditation to placebo analgesia. In this follow-up study, Zeidan sought to determine if dispositional mindfulness, an individual's innate or natural level of mindfulness, was associated with lower pain sensitivity, and to identify what brain mechanisms were involved. In the study, 76 healthy volunteers who had never meditated first completed the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, a reliable clinical measurement of mindfulness, to determine their baseline levels. Then, while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, they were administered painful heat stimulation.

Whole brain analyses revealed that higher dispositional mindfulness during painful heat was associated with greater deactivation of a brain region called the posterior cingulate cortex, a central neural node of the default mode network. Further, in those that reported higher pain, there was greater activation of this critically important brain region. The default mode network extends from the posterior cingulate cortex to the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain. These two brain regions continuously feed information back and forth. This network is associated with processing feelings of self and mind wandering. The study provided novel neurobiological information that showed people with higher mindfulness ratings had less activation in the central nodes (posterior cingulate cortex) of the default network and experienced less pain. Those with lower mindfulness ratings had greater activation of this part of the brain and also felt more pain, Zeidan said.

14 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. "Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by craighansen · · Score: 2

    In this context, Mindfulness is an oxymoron, where to become mindful is to remove oneself from one's own mind. It's the application of adding a level of indirection (*) to every variable. For myself, I've rather make everything inline and register variables.

    1. Re:"Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by ljw1004 · · Score: 5, Informative

      In this context, Mindfulness is an oxymoron, where to become mindful is to remove oneself from one's own mind. It's the application of adding a level of indirection (*) to every variable.

      Mindfulness in this context is just a measure of how people score on a straightforward practical questionnaire. The questions are practical, so there's no oxymoron. The only oxymoron comes from your own putative definition "remove oneself from one's own mind" which isn't what was used in the study. Here are some of the questions in the questionnaire, on a scale from Rarely to Almost Always:

      Q. I sense my body, whether eating, cooking, cleaning or talking.
      Q. I am able to appreciate myself.
      Q. I pay attention to what’s behind my actions.
      Q. I am friendly to myself when things go wrong.
      Q. I am impatient with myself and with others.

      Note that the "mindfulness" used in this context doesn't require you to semantically analyze the questions for what you believe to be contradictions or oddities or the logic of the questions; it's merely an observation of how people respond to it, correlated with population observations of how other people respond to it.

      I think your analogy of "adding a level of indirection" isn't the right one. These questions make it sound like mindfulness is more like executing the code under a debugger, and being in the habit of pausing it in tough situations or just periodically, and inspecting the values of local variables so as to have a better idea of what's going on. The alternative would be to only figure out what's going on by looking at the output values of all functions, or what's printed to stdout.

    2. Re:"Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Interesting

      According to the internet, the reason that the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory supporters keep repeating this odd and out-of-place claim that their technique is "a reliable clinical measurement of mindfulness" is that there is continued professional skepticism about the reliability and clinical utility of the system.

      The research available is hilariously funny to read. For example: https://freidok.uni-freiburg.d...

      Compared to the waitlist group, the intervention group showed significantly higher levels of
      self-reported mindfulness after the intervention. While no other variables changed
      significantly in the overall population, effects in the individual schools indicate relative
      benefits with respect to stress and social-emotional competencies. Qualitative results confirm
      these benefits and reveal awareness processes, distancing, presence as well as acceptance,
      nonjudgement and self-compassion as central mechanisms of change.

      *roflcopter*

      But even just in the acknowledgments, there is the claim:

      I was exceedingly fortunate to encounter mindfulness at the hands of our extraordinary
      teachers, [names]; no amount
      of research could have conveyed to me the wealth of nuances and implications of practice that
      they embody so effortlessly.       For that, and for the true privilege of meeting and working with
      them, I am especially thankful.

      (Emphasis added)
      Yeah. OK. At least we're on the same page about how your research sits relative to knowledge that can be conveyed through research. :)

    3. Re:"Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by QRDeNameland · · Score: 2

      Ah, yes...the delicate science of Tautology.

      --
      Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
    4. Re:"Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by Whibla · · Score: 2

      But even just in the acknowledgments, there is the claim:

      I was exceedingly fortunate to encounter mindfulness at the hands of our extraordinary
      teachers, [names]; no amount
      of research could have conveyed to me the wealth of nuances and implications of practice that
      they embody so effortlessly.       For that, and for the true privilege of meeting and working with
      them, I am especially thankful.

      (Emphasis added)

      Yeah. OK. At least we're on the same page about how your research sits relative to knowledge that can be conveyed through research. :)

      I'd never heard of the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory before today, so I'm not in a position to comment on the consistency or otherwise of it, or the validity of their claims for it, but I'm not sure I see why you single out that quote, other than flippancy. The obvious meaning is akin to the distinction between reading about something and experiencing that same thing in person. For many things in life (going parachuting, eating a fine meal, having sex, coming face to face with an angry grizzly bear, etc.) the two are not even remotely comparable.

    5. Re:"Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by IcyWolfy · · Score: 2

      They make sense if you practise mindfullness.
      They are basic questions taugh when starting out as a newcomer to mindfulness practise.

      Sense my body whether eating, cooking, cleaning, or talking.
        - Do you have the kinestetic sense of the body's orientation, the weight bearing on the muscles, the force of gravity
        - While performing these other actions, do you maintain the awareness of the body -- most people completely disconnect from their body and have no awareness of it all.
        - To have awareness of the body is to be consciously aware of it. To be unconscious of the body is to be unaware of it.

      Pay attention to what's behind my actions
        - Why did I react in such a manner
        - What is the motivation behind the action
        - Why did I feel that way towards an other
        - Why do I think that a given action will lead to another

      Am I friendly to myself when things go wrong.
        - When complications arise, do you self-deprecate.
        - Do you place blame on yourself, do you treat yourself as a failure, or otherwise put yourself down?
        - (follow up question is why do you do these actions)

      Am I impatient with myself and with others
        - This is a very straight forward question, even outside of mindfullness - Are you patient with others?
        - Do you get frustrated when you cannot achieve a goal.
        - Do you get frustrated at others when they cannot seem to grasp a concept you explain to them.

      The only way for studies on mindfulness to increase in quality is to put out more studies on it.
      Each successive ones improving on the previous studies, and addressing the faults.
      One cannot expect a perfectly devised experiment when all the variables are not even quantified, or even what their range of values are.

    6. Re:"Mindfulness" obviously an oxymoron by Bongo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They make sense if you practise mindfullness.

      Ah, much as like religion makes sense if you practice the religion, then. Not at all from an objective perspective, because it must be a subjective experience. In other words: BS

      It is true what you are saying, in that there is a big difference between objective data and subjective expression. And we should not pretend that this is like measuring something objective. Having said that, subjective experience is not BS. If your partner says "I love you and want to have babies and start a family and grow old together", that is all subjective, yet, people have to base the biggest decisions in their lives on whether they intuit that their partner is being sincere, or whether they think their partner is lying, either to them or to themselves.

      Objective science is amazing, and there is the rest of life where no, you cannot be objective, but you cannot just ignore subjectivity and intuition and interpretation and sincerity either, because you'd not be able to function.

      And if you go to a doctor and complain that it hurts, but the doc says they can't find anything wrong with you, too often there are cases where yes there really is something wrong with you, but all you know is how you feel. Ie. "subjective BS".

      But yes, pretty much all of "mindfulness" is a phenomenology, not an objective science. Which is why trying to correlate it with brain activity is interesting.

      What the earlier poster refers to though is something that tends to be heard in mindfulness and meditation circles. And yes it is subjective, but "suffering" is a subjective experience, and we can't tell people who are suffering, because they just lost their job, that they should quit whining because it is "all in their head". As humans we are similar and there are phenomenological experiences which most of us would agree are "suffering". Likewise, as a collection of humans who practice mindfulness, we can compare and talk about whether it seems to reduce suffering.

      And of course a group of people can delude themselves just as a group of scientists peer reviewing each others' clique of speciality can all delude themselves with group think.

      So by all means take that study with a large pinch of salt.

      Mindfulness is simply about noticing that when a bad feeling or bad situation comes up, those events are a bit like a drama on a TV show and you are watching the TV show. The TV is like your consciousness, a screen on which or within which, the image is manifesting, and the TV does not get upset about the drama, the drama is merely a function of what the TV is supposed to be doing naturally.

      So there is a sort of "feeling lighter" and from there you then participate in, and accept more, the drama, and out of that, you probably find answers better. Mindfulness is like, the opposite of running away from problems.

      In Buddhism I gather there is the story of a guy who is shot by an arrow and is obviously in pain, but rather that accept the situation and deal with it, he is very upset that he is shot by an arrow, ie. he is mentally in a state of rejection of the situation, he hates it, and that adds another layer of upset and suffering, in that he just hates the situation, and so he experiences even more pain. "I can't stand it!!" Subjectively he has added additional layers of suffering and pain, to the original "arrow stuck in leg" pain.

      So maybe there is something about whether a stimulus in one part of the brain gets relayed or not, to other parts of the brain, and as your brain is the physical side of your mind, if you alter your mind with a practice of accepting, maybe your brain does rewire, given the material assumption that everything you experience is created by the brain, or could not happen unless the brain itself was doing it.

      If in your mind you have loosened the connections between phenomena so that a pain is more in isolation, more localised, then maybe the brain is also loosening the connections between centres and allowing that is happening in one centre to have less influence on the other centres.

  2. "Administered painful heat simulation"? by Entrope · · Score: 5, Funny

    I saw that movie!

    "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

  3. I use this trick to disassociate pain by ljw1004 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This study resonates with my personal experience. Say I'm in pain at the dentist's, or an insect bite, or fatigue from endurance exercise. I could drop straight into the normal instinctual fight-or-flight emotional response to the pain. But instead I get my mind to observe the pain as a detached analytical observer -- to try to document the sensations of the pain in all their aspects, like a scientist would. I pretend there's no axiom that says "this sensorial experience implies that emotional response". And, hey presto, there the emotional response just doesn't happen.

    1. Re: I use this trick to disassociate pain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For short term pain, endorphins play a major role, as does the perception of how much you expect something to hurt. For example, most piercings don't really hurt (until well afterwards), but most people believe that they do and so "feel" pain. However, having had to cope with severe chronic pain lasting 7 years in the past, I can assure you that any such detachment and ability to cope quickly evaporates. It's the difference between playing in the mud knowing you've got a warm shower waiting for you, and playing in the mud with nothing but more mud to look forward to. Coping with pain isnt macho, heroic or sexy.

  4. Effect size? by alvinrod · · Score: 2

    Before I bother to get excited about this, what was the effect size? It's one thing if this is effective enough to replace painkillers in some patients, but completely another if it's only good for something slightly less painful than a mosquito bite.

  5. In my opinion... by QRDeNameland · · Score: 3, Informative

    Mindfulness is the new religion of modern medicine. What exactly is it? No one can clearly explain. How is it achieved? Well, opinions differ. How can it be objectively measured? Yeah, that's what I thought.

    But yet we have oh so many "studies" showing mindfulness purported to effective, of course always for conditions like pain or depression/anxiety that they lack good and/or safe treatment for. But substitute "mindfulness" with "prayer" (which itself could be seen as a form of mindfulness), would the study be taken seriously by the medical community? Yet I fail to see any significant difference between the two.

    And hey, if it works for you, great! However, it's insulting when a practitioner of supposedly science-based medicine starts touting ill-defined magical solutions as if they were science.

    --
    Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
  6. Self-absorbed=high endorphins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ask an Endocrinologist. They will explain the interaction. This is just plain ole self-hypnosis...

    You don't have to dig very far to see the self-hypnotic aspect of these psychological claims. It's in the language. To infer anything is 'mindful' is some intellectual neer-do-well attempt to call normal behavior 'mindless'. Use negation to understand this one. The same is true of 'positive psychology' or what they consider 'cognition'.

    In any case, you have psychological and actual problems if your solution is to withdraw into some kind of solipsistic fantasy world...

    And let's not get into the 'replication crisis' facing Psychology...

  7. Blogspam by Ty · · Score: 3, Informative
    Provided link is blogspam. Original source: https://newsroom.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2018/09/Mindful-People-Feel-Less-Pain

    My personal experience syncs with this.

    I recently completed a 10-day Vipassana course meditation course. ~10 hours of seated meditation per day, quite a struggle at first. Midway through the course, you are tasked with sitting for an hour straight without moving, 3 times per day. At first I thought this task impossible, as after 10 minutes my knees and ankles would start hurting terribly from sitting in the lotus position.

    However, with practice over just a few sessions, I learned to observe the pain with equanimity, and my obsession with the pain dissipated. The pain was very much still there, but it didn't both me. It was an incredible experience.