Richard Alleyne - Meditation stronger than drugs for pain relief
March 23, 2012 Researchers have found that just one hour of meditation training can reduce immediate pain by nearly half and have a long lasting effect.
The technique appears to work as it calms down pain experiencing areas of the brain while at the same time boosting coping areas.
"This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation," said Dr Fadel Zeidan, lead author at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina.
For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated before attended four, 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention.
Focused attention is a form of mindfulness meditation where people are taught to concentrate on breathing and let go of distracting thoughts and emotions.
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