Vasilisa
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Thinking Away the Pain
Meditation as cheap, self-administered morphine
By Jonah Lehrer*
July 9, 2011
The Wall Street Journal
Excerpt:
Pain is a huge medical problem. According to a new report from the Institute of Medicine, chronic pain costs the U.S. more than $600 billion every year in medical bills and lost productivity. Back pain alone consumes nearly $90 billion in health-care expenses, roughly equivalent to what's spent on cancer.
Despite the increasing prevalence of chronic pain—nearly one in three Americans suffers from it—medical progress has been slow and halting. This is an epidemic we don't know how to treat. For the most part, doctors still rely on over-the-counter medications and opioid drugs, such as OxyContin and Vicodin. While opioids can provide effective relief, they're also prone to abuse, which is why overdoses from prescription painkillers are now a leading cause of accidental death.
But here are glimmers of progress in the war against pain. New therapeutic approaches don't target body parts or nerves close to the source of the problem. They don't involve highly technical surgeries or expensive new drugs. Instead, they focus on the mind, on altering the ways in which we perceive the pain itself.
Consider a study by scientists at Wake Forest University. After only a few days of meditation training—teaching people to better focus their attention, concentrating less on the discomfort and more on a soothing stimulus—subjects reported a 57% reduction in the "unpleasantness" of their pain. Such improvements are roughly equivalent to the benefits of morphine.
A brain scanner showed how the intervention worked. Learning to meditate altered brain activity in the very same regions, such as the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, that are targeted by next-generation pain medications. It's as if the subjects were administering their own painkillers.
While this research demonstrates the therapy’s practicality—it typically took less than two hours of training to see a marked improvement—it's not the first time that scientists have demonstrated a connection between meditation and reduced sensitivity to pain.
< read the full story >
*Jonah Lehrer scandals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer
Meditation as cheap, self-administered morphine
By Jonah Lehrer*
July 9, 2011
The Wall Street Journal
Excerpt:
Pain is a huge medical problem. According to a new report from the Institute of Medicine, chronic pain costs the U.S. more than $600 billion every year in medical bills and lost productivity. Back pain alone consumes nearly $90 billion in health-care expenses, roughly equivalent to what's spent on cancer.
Despite the increasing prevalence of chronic pain—nearly one in three Americans suffers from it—medical progress has been slow and halting. This is an epidemic we don't know how to treat. For the most part, doctors still rely on over-the-counter medications and opioid drugs, such as OxyContin and Vicodin. While opioids can provide effective relief, they're also prone to abuse, which is why overdoses from prescription painkillers are now a leading cause of accidental death.
But here are glimmers of progress in the war against pain. New therapeutic approaches don't target body parts or nerves close to the source of the problem. They don't involve highly technical surgeries or expensive new drugs. Instead, they focus on the mind, on altering the ways in which we perceive the pain itself.
Consider a study by scientists at Wake Forest University. After only a few days of meditation training—teaching people to better focus their attention, concentrating less on the discomfort and more on a soothing stimulus—subjects reported a 57% reduction in the "unpleasantness" of their pain. Such improvements are roughly equivalent to the benefits of morphine.
A brain scanner showed how the intervention worked. Learning to meditate altered brain activity in the very same regions, such as the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, that are targeted by next-generation pain medications. It's as if the subjects were administering their own painkillers.
While this research demonstrates the therapy’s practicality—it typically took less than two hours of training to see a marked improvement—it's not the first time that scientists have demonstrated a connection between meditation and reduced sensitivity to pain.
< read the full story >
*Jonah Lehrer scandals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer
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