Throw out those painkillers: the secret to solving physical aches may lie in using a pair of binoculars the wrong way round, claims research performed at Oxford University.
The study, published in Current Biology, reveals how powerfully pain and even swelling can be a product of our mental attitude.
Researchers asked ten people who suffered chronic pain in one arm to move the limb around while looking at it through a pair of binoculars that were either the right or wrong way round;
When they saw their arm magnified to double its size, the patients reported that their levels of pain increased, but when they exercised the arm while watching a minimised image of it through
inverted binoculars, their pain levels were cut significantly.
But it was not only their perceived pain levels that changed, says the lead researcher, G. Lorimer Moseley. Their levels of physical swelling in the affected areas were also reduced through using the backwards binocular trick.
Moseley says he is not sure how this phenomenon works in terms of specific neurons firing, but he believes that The brain changes its protective responses according to its perception of danger levels. if it looks bigger, it looks sorer, therefore the brain acts to protect it,” he explains.
In effect, the binocular trick offers a much simpler and cheaper version of a pain-lowering brain-scan.
Moseley hopes that the optical-trick discovery will lead to a practical method for lowering pain and trauma levels in hospitals.
[This was sent to me by a fellow hypnotherapist, hat tip, Seth-Deborah -- but did not include a link. Sorry.]
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