Breaking News English

Meditation can be better at pain than the best pain-relieving drugs, according to a new published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The study into the effects of the and pain was led by Dr Fadel Zeidan in the USA. The research looked at a called “focused attention,” which is a of meditation where people their thoughts only on their . Dr Zeidan said: “This is the first study to show that only a over an hour of meditation training can dramatically both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation”. Zeidan added: “We found a big effect - about a 40 per cent in pain intensity and a 57 per cent reduction in pain unpleasantness.”

The study involved a of volunteers who had never meditated before. They four 20-minute classes to learn about focused attention. Before and after the meditation , the researchers examined the participants’ brain using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). During the scans, a device was placed on their leg to pain. The MRI scans showed that after the meditation training, pain felt by every decreased from between 11 to 93 per cent. Zeidan compared these to medicines, saying: “Meditation produced a reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically pain by about 25 per cent.”