Episode 74: Mindfulness & Pain

In this episode, I talk about new research supporting mindfulness meditation and pain relief.

Transcript

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Welcome back to Excel. This is a mental evolution podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Seth Rose. And today is episode 74, where we're talking about mindfulness and pain. Some newer research that just came out that came across my desk was looking at mindfulness meditation and its effect on pain. And I thought it was pretty interesting and I wanted to share. So for years, people have been asking the question: do things like meditation or mindfulness really work for pain, or is it just a placebo, right? Well, a brand new study gives us one of the clearest answers that we've seen yet. And it shows that athletes, performers, and anyone dealing with discomfort or pain, acute or chronically, uh, may benefit from this type of practice. So we know pain isn't just about the body, right? It's shaped by your brain and it's triggered by different uh emotions or different feelings that you have or expectations. And it's essentially signaling that your brain is perceiving or interpreting, right? So sometimes people have pain without even really having an injury to any sort of tissue or muscle or bone. And so placebo, for example, can change how much pain people feel simply through their self-belief. So the big question is: is mindfulness meditation just another form of placebo, or is there actual research to show that it's working through a unique brain mechanism? So the study that I want to share is that researchers tested over 100 participants across two clinical trials. And some of the people practiced mindfulness meditation. Some other people got a placebo pain cream, like rubbed on the injured uh body part. And others did a sham meditation. Um basically, they just listened to an audiobook. And then everyone was exposed to a painful heat uh undergoing various different types of brain scans. And the researchers used uh what's called fMRI, which is a functional MRI of the brain, basically picking up brain signatures to tell whether pain is coming from sensory input, emotional distress, or belief-based placebos. And here's what they found: they found that mindfulness meditation reduced both the sensory side of the pain, which is like the ouch feeling that you get, and the emotional side, the unpleasantness, right? So that's pretty big right there. The placebo cream, on the other hand, only reduced the pain signature linked to things like expectations or your self-belief of the pain. Whereas the sham meditation or the audiobook didn't show the same neural effects as real mindfulness. So, what does this mean? The study showed that mindfulness and placebo reduced pain, but through completely different pain pathways. And they picked this up in the brain scans. So this is the first time that we've had pretty strong evidence looking at brain scans that shows that mindfulness isn't just a placebo. It truly taps into the unique mechanisms of pain relief. So, what does this mean for you as an athlete or a high performer? It means that mindfulness isn't just calming, it can literally change the way that the brain processes pain through different mechanisms. It can help you handle both the physical intensity of the discomfort and the emotional weight of it. So, for all those athletes out there that are dealing with any sort of injury or coming back from an injury, this is a great practice to add into your uh day-to-day. So next time you're feeling discomfort, maybe take a pause and focus on your breathing. Notice the sensations without any sort of judgment. Rather than this is bad, maybe it's just what it is. This is pressure or tightness or discomfort. And then just simply bring your attention back to the present moment. A great recommendation is to start small, anywhere from three to five minutes a few times a week, and then build up from there. Now, the shift isn't going to erase pain, but it's going to change your relationship with it. And it shows in the research that it does change your body's and your brain's response. So the takeaway here, mindfulness meditation reduces pain in ways placebo can't. And it's a trainable skill that you can implement into your day-to-day and help you be a little bit more resilient when you do encounter painful responses. So that's it for today. Keep training the mind. And uh, you know, remember mental performance isn't about avoiding discomfort. It's about how we master the response to it. Catch you on the next one.