The doctor is in

Two articles sent by Doc Rowe

How Zen meditation controls pain
2010-12-09
Previous studies have shown that Zen meditation has many health benefits, including a reduced sensitivity to pain. Now researchers at the Universite de Montreal have discovered how meditators achieve this.
They found that meditators do feel pain but they simply don't dwell on it as much.
"Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrated that although the meditators were aware of the pain, this sensation wasn't processed in the part of their brains responsible for appraisal, reasoning or memory formation," said senior author Pierre Rainville.
"We think that they feel the sensations, but cut the process short, refraining from interpretation or labelling of the stimuli as painful," Rainville said.
Rainville and his colleagues compared the response of 13 Zen meditators to 13 non-meditators to a painful heat stimulus.
Pain perception was measured and compared with functional MRI data. The most experienced Zen practitioners showed lower pain responses and decreased activity in the brain areas responsible for cognition, emotion and memory.
In addition, there was a decrease in the communication between a part of the brain that senses the pain and the prefrontal cortex.
These findings may have implications for chronic pain sufferers, such as those with arthritis, back pain or cancer.

#2
A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) found meditation provides the same protection against depression and depressive relapse as traditional antidepressant medication.
"With the growing recognition that major depression is a recurrent disorder, patients need treatment options for preventing depression from returning to their lives," said Dr. Zindel Segal, Head of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Clinic in the Clinical Research Department at CAMH.
Recent studies have shown about half of depressed people on antidepressants stop taking them, sometimes within two to four months, well before the medication has had a chance to work.
Segal said this could be due to side effects or an unwillingness to take medication for years.
"Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is a non pharmacological approach that teaches skills in emotion regulation so that patients can monitor possible relapse triggers as well as adopt lifestyle changes conducive to sustaining mood balance," said Segal.
For the study, participants who were diagnosed with major depressive disorder were all treated with an antidepressant until their symptoms remitted.
They were then randomly assigned to come off their medication and receive MBCT, come off their medication and receive a placebo, or stay on their medication.
Participants in MBCT attended 8 weekly group sessions and practiced mindfulness as part of daily homework assignments.
Clinical assessments were conducted at regular intervals, and over an 18 month period, relapse rates for patients in the MBCT group did not differ from patients receiving antidepressants (both in the 30% range), whereas patients receiving placebo relapsed at a significantly higher rate (70%).
"The real world implications of these findings bear directly on the front line treatment of depression. For that sizeable group of patients who are unwilling or unable to tolerate maintenance antidepressant treatment, MBCT offers equal protection from relapse," said Segal.
"Sequential intervention -- offering pharmacological and psychological interventions -- may keep more patients in treatment and thereby reduce the high risk of recurrence that is characteristic of this disorder."
The study was published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.