Pain is Partly in Your Mind

Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director, LiveScience.com

Pain may not be all in your mind, but some of it is.

A bizarre new study of people with chronically achy

hands found that how subjects literally saw their hands

changed their perception of pain.

Researchers had 10 subjects watch their own hands

while performing a 10-step test that caused pain every

time. Participants each did the test four ways:

looking as normal with their own eyes,

looking through binoculars with no magnification,

looking through binoculars that doubled the apparent size

of subjects' arms, and

looking through inverted binoculars that reduced the

apparent size of subjects' arms.

The pain increased more when participants viewed a

magnified image of their arm during the movements. When

they did the movements while watching through inverted

binoculars, the pain was reported to be less, and actual

measurable swelling was less, too.

The scientists don't know for sure what's going on. They

think it might have to do with how our brain perceives

danger:

"If it looks bigger, it looks sorer and more swollen,"

said G. Lorimer Moseley of the Prince of Wales Medical

Research Institute in Australia.

"Therefore, the brain acts to protect it."

That does not necessarily mean the pain is actually 

greater, Moseley said.

Scientists do not fully understand how pain works. But the

new finding, published in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal

Current Biology, might lead to new ways to treat chronic

pain, which affects about 75 million U.S. residents.

"The brain is capable of many wonderful things based on

its perception of how the body is doing and the risks to

which the body seems to be exposed," Moseley said.

·           Video: All About Arthritis 

·           Why Does Ice Cream Cause Brain Freeze? 

·           5 Painful Facts You Need to Know 

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081125/sc_livescience/painispartlyinyourmind

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