Summary: Many health experts reject mindfulness as nothing more than a way of distracting the mind from the pain. However, a new study using fMRI shows that mindfulness works and its mechanism of action is distinct and more potent than a placebo effect.
Many health experts have long been skeptical about the role of mindfulness meditation in managing chronic pain. One of the reasons for this skepticism is that the way mindfulness works remains elusive. Most health experts believe in scientific evidence, which has been mostly missing.
Surely, there are numerous reports and studies showing that mindfulness medication works, especially for chronic pain. However, health experts have generally rejected these findings as nothing more than a placebo or something that distracts a person’s mind from the pain. So, they had limited trust in mindfulness or even in other such therapies.
However, new studies show that mindfulness works, and it is not merely a placebo effect. It appears that mindfulness meditation works distinctively from placebo, which can be demonstrated using advanced brain scans. This provides some sound evidence in favor of recommending such therapies in clinical practice like in interventional pain management.
Things in pain research are also made challenging by the multifaceted nature of pain. There are just too many factors influencing how people experience pain. Thus, even an expectation that something might help may reduce pain sensation – a placebo effect.
People in different cultures have used mindfulness meditation for ages to control their minds and reprogram their brains. However, to date, most researchers have believed that mindfulness also works similarly to a placebo response. But now, a new study shows that this is not the case.
This new study was published in Biological Psychiatry. To understand the workings of mindfulness, researchers enrolled 115 participants and randomized them into four groups, with one group practicing mindfulness meditation, another being given placebo treatment, yet another group being prescribed sham mindfulness meditation, and the fourth group engaging in book reading. After each intervention, painful or noxious heat was applied, and their brains were scanned using fMRI.
Researchers found that mindfulness resulted in the activation of different brain areas compared to the placebo. This shows that mindfulness works in a very different way than placebo. Hence, this study adds to the existing body of evidence that mindfulness not only works but also shows that it is unwise to compare it with placebo.
In fact, mindfulness is quite a powerful tool, especially for managing chronic pain. It appears that by dissociating oneself from pain, one is able to modulate it. Best of all, mindfulness costs nothing.
Of course, other treatments also work. Placebo also helps reduce pain sensation. However, mindfulness helps modulate brain areas like those engaged in emotional regulation. Hence, it is more likely to produce long-lasting effects.
Moreover, researchers say that even a placebo works differently from other regular pain treatments.
Further, since mindfulness works differently from a placebo effect, thus it can be used as an intervention to manage chronic pain along with other treatments. Chronic pain specialists may find mindfulness particularly useful for managing chronic conditions.
Researchers also noticed in the study that mindfulness was better for pain relief than placebo. This is important since, in modern medicine, only treatments that outperform placebo are regarded as effective and useful for clinical use. Therefore, it would be right to say that mindfulness is a powerful tool for managing chronic pain that works, and it works differently from the placebo.
These findings are relevant, considering that millions of people are living with chronic pain. Chronic pain is quite challenging to manage, and many of those living with it continue to experience pain for months or even years.
It is good to see that science is finally exploring the neurobiology of mindfulness, one of the ancient practices.
Source:
Riegner, G., Dean, J., Wager, T. D., & Zeidan, F. (2024). Mindfulness meditation and placebo modulate distinct multivariate neural signatures to reduce pain. Biological Psychiatry, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.08.023