Mindfulness meditation-based pain relief: a mechanistic account

Pain is a multidimensional experience that involves interacting sensory, cognitive, and affective factors, rendering the treatment of chronic pain challenging and financially burdensome. Further, the widespread use of opioids to treat chronic pain has led to an opioid epidemic characterized by expon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 2016-06, Vol.1373 (1), p.114-127
Main Authors: Zeidan, Fadel, Vago, David R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chronic Pain - psychology
Chronic Pain - therapy
fMRI
Humans
Meditation
Meditation - methods
Mindfulness - methods
mindfulness meditation
Narcotics
opioid
pain
Pain management
Pain Management - methods
placebo
Treatment Outcome
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Summary:Pain is a multidimensional experience that involves interacting sensory, cognitive, and affective factors, rendering the treatment of chronic pain challenging and financially burdensome. Further, the widespread use of opioids to treat chronic pain has led to an opioid epidemic characterized by exponential growth in opioid misuse and addiction. The staggering statistics related to opioid use highlight the importance of developing, testing, and validating fast‐acting nonpharmacological approaches to treat pain. Mindfulness meditation is a technique that has been found to significantly reduce pain in experimental and clinical settings. The present review delineates findings from recent studies demonstrating that mindfulness meditation significantly attenuates pain through multiple, unique mechanisms—an important consideration for the millions of chronic pain patients seeking narcotic‐free, self‐facilitated pain therapy.
ISSN:0077-8923
1749-6632
DOI:10.1111/nyas.13153