Brief observationMindfulness Meditation Modulates Pain Through Endogenous Opioids
Section snippets
Methods
Fifteen healthy mindfulness-meditation practitioners participated in 30 sessions of a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover study. All participants were recruited from the same meditation practice center in Tel Aviv and had over a year's experience of at least one hour of practice a day at least 3 times a week. All practiced sitting mindfulness meditation and referred to the type of practice that they perform as Shamatha or Vipassana meditation.5 All participants had no
Results
A (3) × (2) repeated-measurements analysis of variance was performed separately for both pain and unpleasantness scores for the within-subjects factors of time (prior to/after meditation) and condition (no treatment, naloxone or placebo injection). Both analyses revealed a significant time effect [F(1, 13) = 19.01 for pain ratings; F(1, 13) = 22.85 for unpleasantness, both P <.001], as well as a significant condition effect [F(2, 26) = 4.62 for pain ratings; F(2, 26) = 9.01 for unpleasantness,
Conclusions
In line with previous reports, we found that mindfulness meditation induces a significant analgesic effect. However, we found that this effect was reversed by the administration of an opioid antagonist, indicating the recruitment of the endogenous opioid system during meditation.
Interestingly, in this study there was a significant correlation between the differential response to naloxone vs saline and participants' meditation experience, with saline being more likely to reverse the mindfulness
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank Mr. Avy Lugassy for his support.
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2018, Pharmacological ResearchCitation Excerpt :Currently, EOPs are known to play important physiological roles by acting on μ, δ and κ opioid receptors, with varying selectivity for each opioid receptor subtype depending on the particular EOP [16,18]. This endogenous opioid system participates in pain modulation, and it is thought that many if not most nonpharmacological therapies for pain, including acupuncture, exercise, and some mind-body interventions (such as mindfulness meditation or the placebo effect), work by engaging endogenous analgesic pathways that are at least partly opioid dependent [19–23]. In fact, morphine, initially found to be the active compound of opium extract, as well as all other opioid agonists (both naturally-occurring and synthetic), exert their analgesic effects by mimicking the actions of EOPs, but at a much higher intensity than that achievable by nonpharmacological interventions.
The Reply
2016, American Journal of MedicineNo, Mindfulness Meditation-Based Analgesia Is Not Mediated by Endogenous Opioids
2016, American Journal of Medicine
Funding: This research was supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 51/11) and by Adopt a researcher-TASMC excellence program for physician researchers.
Conflict of Interest: None.
Authorship: All authors had access to the data and participated in writing the manuscript.
- 1
These authors contributed equally to this work.
- 2
These authors contributed equally to this work.