Government officials, physicians, and the public are increasingly aware of a need to move away from using opiate drugs to treat chronic pain. More and more, doctors are searching for ways to help patients manage pain with non-pharmacological interventions. In line with this trend, new findings now support the use of mindfulness to treat chronic low back pain.
In a clinical trial published March 22 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), subjects who underwent mindfulness training for eight weeks were more likely to report improvements in pain, lasting up to a year, compared to people who received whatever other care they chose. The study was led by Daniel Cherkin, Group Health Research Institute, Seattle, US, and Judith Turner, University of Washington, also in Seattle.
A second study, published March 16 in the Journal of Neuroscience and led by Fadel Zeidan, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US, and Robert Coghill, now at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Ohio, US, hints at how mindfulness might reduce pain. The researchers showed in healthy subjects that meditation reduced acute pain independent of endogenous opioids, which account for the vast majority of other brain-based manipulations—such as the placebo effect or conditioned pain modulation.
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http://www.painresearchforum.org/news/66166-mindfulness-effective-chronic-low-back-pain-clinical-trial
