Mindfulness meditation really does relieve pain, brain scans reveal

Breathe in, breathe out — new brain scans have revealed that mindfulness meditation really does relieve pain, and not because it acts like a placebo.

Mindfulness meditation refers to the ancient practice of drawing attention to the present moment in a nonjudgmental way — releasing thoughts of looking silly or doing it wrong, for instance. New research finds that this practice activates specific lines of communication, or pathways between brain cells, that can reduce the perception of pain.

These pathways differ from those stimulated by the placebo effect, and their activation results in more powerful pain-relieving effects than sham treatments.

These recent findings, published Aug. 29 in the journal Biological Psychiatry, were drawn from Healthy people who were exposed to a brief, painful stimulus and then used different methods to alleviate that pain. If the same results show up in patients with chronic pain, mindfulness meditation could be a promising, active therapy option, the study authors argue.

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"Millions of people are living with chronic pain every day, and there may be more these people can do to reduce their pain and improve their quality of life than we previously understood," Fadel Zeidan, study co-author and a professor of anesthesiology at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement.

Mindfulness meditation has been used for millennia in various cultures for pain-relief purposes. However, scientists have questioned whether some of its purported pain-relieving effects actually stem from the placebo effect. This phenomenon causes people to perceive that their symptoms have improved even though they received an inactive treatment that doesn't directly treat their condition.