• Why some people love the burn of hot chili peppers

    By Tia Ghose, LiveScience 

    Pain isn't always a pain. Sometimes it can actually feel good. 

    People experience pleasure during a painful stimulus if the stimulus turns out to be less bad than they were expecting, new research suggests.

    "It is not hard to understand that pain can be interpreted as less severe when an individual is aware that it could have been much more painful," said study co-author Siri Leknes, a psychologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, in a statement. "Less expected, however, is the discovery that pain may be experienced as pleasant if something worse has been avoided."

    The findings were published in the March issue of the journal Pain.

    To see how people perceived pain, Leknes and her colleagues hooked 16 participants up to a device that applied a variable level of painful heat to their arms. At the same time, the researchers measured their brain activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

    In the first setting, participants experienced a series of either a slightly painful stimulus — about as painful as grasping a slightly too hot cup of coffee — or no pain.

    In a second setup, the participants experienced a series of either moderate or intense pain. On a screen, the participants could see what type of pain was coming up next in the series.

    In the first scenario, the participants rated the moderate pain as unpleasant.

    But interestingly, participants rated the moderate pain as actually pleasurable in the second setup, when the alternative was the intense pain. During the moderate stimulus in the second setup, participants' brain activity also showed less activation in the pain region of the brain (the brain stem) and more activation in a region in the middle of the frontal lobes that's associated with pain relief and pleasure than during the same stimulus in the first setup.

    "The likely explanation is that the subjects were prepared for the worst and thus felt relieved when they realized the pain was not going to be as bad as they had feared," Leknes said in a statement. "In other words, a sense of relief can be powerful enough to turn such an obviously negative experience as pain into a sensation that is comforting or even enjoyable."

    The finding could shed light on why some people experience the burn of hot chili peppers or painful sex as pleasurable.

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  • Comic relief: Laughter is a natural painkiller

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    By Cari Nierenberg

    This is no laughing matter (or maybe it is): A small British study has found that laughter can increase your tolerance of pain. It seems that cracking up in the company of other people releases endorphins, the same feel-good brain chemicals triggered while exercising.

    Laughter is helpful when you're hurting because it's hard work for the body. A hearty, sustained laugh is a good workout for muscles in the chest and lungs, and this can trigger the release of endorphins to mask the pain, says Robin Dunbar, PhD, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, who led the study. When endorphin levels increase, a person's pain threshold rise, he explains. 

    For the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists ran a series of six different experiments in the lab and one in a real-world setting, during live stage performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Many of the tests were done in small groups because other research has shown that laughter is 30 times more likely to occur in a social situation than when you're alone.

    In some studies, half of the volunteers watched a comedy video -- ranging from episodes of "South Park" and "Friends" to "Mr. Bean" and "The Simpsons" -- while the others viewed a documentary on dull stuff like golf instruction, pet training, or a nature show. 

    Each participant's individual pain threshold was tested before and after watching the videos, using such pain-inducing techniques as an increasingly tighter blood pressure cuff around the upper arm or a frozen wine cooler sleeve placed on the forearm and held there until the person couldn't take it any longer. Pain tolerance was considered a proxy measure of endorphin levels.

    Researchers also recorded the amount of time participants spent laughing. But polite titters wouldn't cut it; only relaxed social laughter that stretched smile muscles in the face counted.

    Pain tolerance was shown to be higher in men and women who watched funny videos, but they stayed the same or were lower in those who didn't. Scientists were also able to tease out that a person's ability to handle more pain was due to the laughter itself and not just because it put someone in a better mood.

    Laughter is definitely some of the best medicine for pain, says Dunbar. It seems that endorphins tune up the immune system, so triggering their release through laughter helps you recover from disease and allows the body to resist infection, he explains

    Would some comic relief help those suffering from chronic pain? Presumably, the more you engage in social events that involve laughter, you'll be better able to bear chronic pain, Dunbar says.

    "No doubt the pharmaceutical companies won't like it, but laughter would save on hospital bills," he points out.

    Related:

    People who don't laugh easily are only fooling themselves

    Your doc's sick sense of humor is good for your health

    We may hate laugh tracks -- but they work

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  • Job a (literal) pain in the neck? Down some coffee

    By MyHealthNewsDaily staff

    If your job is a literal pain in the neck, drinking coffee may help, a new study from Norway says.

    People who drank coffee before sitting down to work at a computer for 90 minutes reported less pain in their necks and shoulders than those who didn't drink coffee, according to the study. Some in the study had previously suffered chronic neck and shoulder pain, while other participants hadn't — but people in both groups who drank coffee reported less pain, the researchers said.

    Among people whose daily work involves low levels of muscle activity, such as sitting at a computer all day, about 10 percent report shoulder and neck pain, according to the study.

    The researchers looked at 48 people, including 22 with chronic neck or shoulder pain, and 26 healthy people. The experiment was part of research on how pain develops during office work; it was not  intended to look at the effects of caffeine, the researchers said.

    People in the study reported to the laboratory first thing in the morning, so to offset any effects of sleepiness, coffee and tea were available. Nineteen of the study participants chose to drink coffee, but were instructed not to drink more than one cup. 

    Then, for 90 minutes, participants performed a computer task, using only a mouse.

    Researchers found that people who drank coffee — whether they had previous chronic pain or not — developed less pain over the course of the 90 minutes, compared with those who didn't drink coffee. And at the end of the computer task, the coffee drinkers rated their pain as less intense than the other study participants. 

    It's possible the reduction in pain experienced by coffee drinkers in the study was due to other traits or lifestyle behaviors common to people in this group. Future studies should be conducted in which participants are randomly assigned to consume caffeine or not in order to better understand whether the caffeine itself is truly reducing pain, the researchers said.

    The study, conducted by researchers at the Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital in Norway, was published Sept. 3 in the journal BMC Research Notes.

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  • Fear needles? Look away and pain is less

    By MyHealthNewsDaily.com

    Looking away while you're getting an injection really does make it hurt less, a new study from Germany suggests.

    Study participants who received a mild electric shock on their hand rated their pain as more intense when they watched a video of a hand being pricked by a needle, compared with when they watched a hand being touched by a Q-tip.

    "We’ve provided empirical evidence in favor of the common advice not to look at the needle prick when receiving an injection," study researcher Marion Höfle, a doctoral student at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, said in a statement.

    Our perception of pain is based on our past experience. "Throughout our lives, we repeatedly learn that sharp objects cause pain when penetrating our skin," the study researchers wrote.

    But it's also based on our expectations in a given situation, they said. For example, a health care professional may influence our pain by telling us what to expect before they administer an injection.

    In the study, 25 people, mostly university students, were given electric shocks designed to "evoke a stabbing and sharp sensation" in their left index fingers. Prior to the experiment, researchers measured each participant's pain threshold and adjusted the intensity of the shock accordingly.

    During the experiment, each participant sat with his left hand, palm-up, beneath a screen in front of him, as a video of a hand in the same position was played on the screen — this gave the impression that they were looking at their own hand, the researchers said. The hand in the video was either pricked with a needle, or touched with a Q-tip. As a control, participants were also shown a hand alone.

    Participants rated the pain they felt, and the unpleasantness of the sensation, on scales from 0 to 100.

    Results showed that participants reported slightly worse pain, and significantly more unpleasantness, when they watched the video of the needle, compared with the video of the Q-tip. 

    The findings suggest that people's expectations regarding a pain they are about to feel affect their perception of the pain's intensity, the researchers wrote in their conclusion, published in the May issue of the journal Pain.

    The results are in line with those of previous studies, the researcher said. For example, people who are given cues that a stimulus will be very painful rate their pain as stronger, compared with people given the same stimulus but given cues that the pain will be mild.

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  • Distraction reduces pain, study finds

    By Joseph Brownstein
    MyHealthNewsDaily

    When you distract yourself from pain, you actually hurt less, a new study suggests.

    Study participants who were subjected to slight pain on their forearms reported less discomfort when they were asked to perform a distracting mental test as the pain was delivered.

    Moreover, when participants were given a placebo "pain relief" cream, and distracted at the same time, their pain was even more reduced.

    "Both placebo and distraction are effective mechanisms for reducing pain. You can combine them and you don't lose anything," said study researcher Jason Buhle, who conducted the research as part of his doctoral dissertation from Columbia University.

    The work sheds light on how the placebo effect may work, Buhle said. Previously, it had been thought that the placebo effect was the result of some — perhaps unconscious — mental effort, but the new results suggest that it relies on a separate mechanism from distraction.

    The study was published Jan. 18 in the journal Psychological Science.

    Distraction has been found to reduce pain in the past, Buhle said, but the new study showed that those benefits could come in addition to those of a placebo.

    The study involved 33 participants. Researchers attached a heating device to their forearms, which delivered some pain.

    As a distraction, the participants took what is called a "3-back" test, where they were given a series of letters, and had to say whether a letter was the same as the letter that had been listed three earlier.

    In one experiment, participants were also given a cream to put on their arms, and told it was a pain reliever. In another, they were given the same cream, but from a different container, and were told it was simply for the workings of the pain-administering device.

    What the researchers found was that the placebo cream and the distracting test both had lessened the participants' pain, but distraction made for a much more effective pain reliever.

    "It's clear that [distraction] is very powerful, and it was not uncommon for someone with a distraction condition to say, 'Did you really turn it on?'" Buhle said. "Sometimes they won't even feel the pain… It is striking to see."

    By contrast, he said, "Nobody says that after the placebo."

    Moreover, the use of a placebo did not appear to change how well participants performed on the 3-back test, which would have indicated some thought being devoted to the placebo itself.

    Calling the findings "intriguing," Dr. Ian Cook, director of the UCLA Depression Research & Clinic Program, said the study helps point to a new path for non-drug treatments for pain.

    It would be interesting to see the effect of distraction on other conditions where the placebo effect has shown an impact, such as anxiety, Cook said.

    In the past, said Cook, distraction has proven to be useful, particularly with children, as a means of reducing pain. Mostly, he said, it has been used in the form of humor, influenced by a 1976 article by Norman Cousins about the healing power of a positive attitude, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    But distraction goes beyond humor.

    "It's not clear whether it has to be something that's humorous, or whether it can be anything else that engages attention and distracts form the painful experience," said Cook.

    The use of placebos in medicine has been controversial, in part because it relies on deceiving patients to be effective. Cook said it's clear it is used in some cases.

    "Many physicians do, evidently…they'll prescribe an antibiotic for a viral illness, even though that's not likely to have any biological benefit at all," he said.

    Cook, who specializes in depression, said he would not prescribe it for his patients.

    "It doesn't seem to be of great benefit there," he said. "Once the person learns they've been taking a placebo, once they learn they've been deceived, the benefits tend to dissipate very rapidly."

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