Friday, 04/17/2026
Health
Could Meditation help reduce the need for opioids?
Update: 10/09/2016
Chronic pain is aleading\r\ncauseof disability, not\r\nto mention psychological burden; but we have few effective, non-addictive\r\nmethods for addressing this global problem.
\r\n\r\nEarlier this year, inJournal of the American Medical\r\nAssociation (JAMA),the CDC (Centers for Disease control and\r\nprevention) released newguidelinesto doctorsfor prescribing opioids for chronic pain,\r\nthe first of which is the recommendation to try nonpharmacologic interventions\r\nbefore pharmacologic ones. Also in the journalJAMAlast month\r\nwas aneditorialoutlining the potential role of mindfulness meditation as an\r\nalternative to the opioid over-prescription problem. Though it may not be\r\neffective in every case, mindfulness meditation seems tobe\r\napromisingtool for people who are dealing with mild\r\normoderate pain, or at leastas an adjunct for people who are\r\ndealing with various types ofpain. It’s not a panacea, but the research\r\nlaying outits effects on pain, both in life and in the lab, is growing\r\nsteadily.
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Onestudyearlier\r\nthis year, for instance, had people with chronic lower back pain take part in\r\neither an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course, or as\r\nmany weeks of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), which is also known to be\r\neffective for managing pain. A control group was made of people receiving\r\n“usual care,†which consisted somewhat vaguely of “whatever care participants\r\nreceived.†At the end of the study period, people receiving MBSR and CBT all\r\nimproved about the same amount – their pain was reduced by about 44% and 45%,\r\nrespectively, vs. 27% in the control group. So both MBSR and CBT seem to reduce\r\npain significantly over standard care. In another recentstudy,\r\na similar level of relief was found for older adults experiencing chronic pain\r\nand who were assigned to learn MBSR.
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And interestingly, the pain relief that comes from mindfulness\r\nmeditation doesn’t seem to rely on the opioid pathway. In anotherstudy, people who were taught meditationandwhose\r\nopioid receptors were blocked, still had significantly less pain in response to\r\na painful stimulus than those in a control group. “This study adds to the\r\ngrowing body of evidence that something unique is happening with how meditation\r\nreduces pain,†said study author Fadel Zeidan. “These findings are especially\r\nsignificant to those who have built up a tolerance to opiate-based drugs and\r\nare looking for a non-addictive way to reduce their pain.â€
\r\n\r\nZeidan’s other work has mapped out some of the neural underpinnings\r\nof meditation’s effects on the pain response, using MRI. He’s found that\r\nmeditation, among other things, affects areas of the brain that govern how we\r\ncontextualize what’s happening in the environment (theorbitofrontal cortex) and ourcognitive control and emotional\r\nregulation (anterior cingulate cortex), which bothare rich in opioid\r\nreceptors.
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Meditation wasalso linked to reduced activity in the\r\nthalamus, which is like a relay station for incoming information from the\r\nspinal cord tothe brain. Zeidansaysthat\r\nsubjects who were trained in mindfulness said things like, “I felt the pain was\r\nthere, but I was able to let it go. I didn’t dwell on it so much.†Part of\r\nmeditation’s beneficial effects may be that it shifts the way we relate to our\r\nown perceptions of our pain.
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Forbes/ Pharma &\r\nHealthcare
Alice G. Walter