In a previous post we discussed the application of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for the relief of pain in adult women.

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It was demonstrated that the combination of meditation, body scan, and yoga contained in MBSR was effective for pain management.

Not everything that is effective with adults is also effective with children and adolescents.

Hence, it is important to establish if mindfulness training is also effective with adolescents. In today’s Research News article “The Effects of Mindful Attention and State Mindfulness on Acute Experimental Pain among Adolescents”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4027879/

Petter and colleagues investigated whether a very brief mindfulness session would affect pain sensitivity in 13-18 year-olds. Although the brief manipulation was not effective, they found that adolescents who were meditators and high in mindfulness had significantly lower pain in a standardized pain manipulation.

Hence it appears that mindfulness is associated with lower sensitivity to pain even in adolescents. It is noteworthy that meditation practice alone was associated with the reduction in pain perception. Hence, although the other components of MBSR, body scan and yoga, may also be helpful, they are not necessary for pain relief.

McGrath and colleagues then addressed how mindfulness might produce lower pain levels. They found that mindfulness reduced catastrophizing, the tendency to magnify the threat value of pain, to feel helpless in the face of pain, and to ruminate about pain. It was this reduction in catastrophizing that produced the pain relief. In other words catastrophizing mediated the effect of mindfulness on pain. These findings complement the theoretical work which places catastrophizing as playing a central role in adolescent chronic pain.

Hence, it appears that in adolescents pain is magnified by catastrophizing. In this form of thinking, the presence of pain brings forth unsettling memories of past pain and rumination about future pain. The individual then becomes focused on the pain and thoughts about the pain. This form of thinking builds on itself in a vicious cycle of catastrophizing magnifying pain which in turn magnifies catastrophizing.

Mindfulness can break this vicious cycle by focusing the individual on the present moment. This reduces the amount of thinking about the past and future which is the source of catastrophizing, which then tends to reduce the perception of pain. Hence, mindfulness emphasizes present moment awareness, reducing catastrophizing, and in turn reducing pain.

Mindfulness training is also known to directly affect the brain pathways and cortical areas that underlie pain perception and thereby reduce the magnitude of the pain signal in the brain. In addition, mindfulness reduces the emotional reactions and the arousal response to pain. This also mitigates pain perception.

This is important to discover a method to treat pain without drugs. The prescription pain medications, primarily opiates, are addictive, disorienting, and very dangerous with thousands of deaths each year attributable to overdoses of prescription pain medications. Mindfulness training is a great alternative, effective and safe. But beware, it has such positive benefits that it may become addictive!

So, practice mindfulness and stop pain being a pain.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies