Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Why Do We Hurt Each Other?

April 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
boston-marathon

Shortly after reports started coming out—from professional journalists and citizen reporters alike—that two explosions had gone off in downtown Boston this afternoon near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest annual marathon and one of the most high-profile road-racing events anywhere in the world, my friend and former colleague, Max Fisher, now the foreign affairs blogger for The Washington Post, tweeted out a message from his sister, a runner, that got me thinking. "I have been running long distance events for many years and every time I go by a crowd I get that ... Read More

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Pills Fight Pain — And You Don’t Even Have to Take Them

March 26, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Ibuprofen

Looking for a simple way to raise your pain threshold? Grab a bottle of ibuprofen … and then put it back down, unopened. Newly published research suggests your brain will do the rest. A study that builds upon seminal research from a decade ago “demonstrates that objects in the environment can nonconsciously decrease pain sensitivity,” according to psychologists Abraham Rutchick of California State University, Northridge and Michael Slepian of Stanford University. This understanding could eventually lead to “efficient clinical interventions,” they write in the online journal ... Read More

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Musical Meds

November 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
musicpill2

Jealous of the “runner’s high” serious athletes feel after an intense, vigorous workout? Well, newly published research reveals three alternative ways you can release those mood-enhancing endorphins: Singing, dancing, and drumming. That’s the conclusion of a study by University of Oxford psychologist Robin Dunbar. He and his colleagues report people who have just been playing music have a higher tolerance for pain—an indication their bodies are producing endorphins, which are sometimes referred to as natural opiates. In their experiments, simply listening to music did not ... Read More

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What Is Torture? We Know It (Only) When We Feel It

April 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The definition of torture has become somewhat fuzzy in the post-9/11 world. According to the United Nations 1984 Convention on Torture, which was ratified by more than 150 nations, the practice of torture involves “the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” In other words, whether or not a specific technique constitutes torture is determined by the level of pain it produces. But how good are we at estimating the amount of agony a particular action will produce? Newly published research suggests the answer is: not good at all. According to a research team led by ... Read More

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Feel the Pain, Expel the Guilt

January 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

While it may strike many as medieval, ritual self-punishment continues to be practiced by certain groups of both Christians and Muslims. Newly published research from Australia suggests why this pain-inducing practice has survived through the centuries: It provides psychological benefits to the self-flagellating faithful. Agony, it seems, alleviates guilt. “Experiencing pain as a penalty can cause people to feel that their guilt is resolved and their soul cleansed,” a research team led by psychologist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland reports in the journal Psychological ... Read More

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The Chemical Contrails of the Placebo

November 30, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

A team of researchers smears a cream said to contain a powerful anesthetic on the skin of your forearm. Then, in their mad-scientist way, they apply an electric heating pad that can be dialed up to painfully hot levels. Imagine being pleasantly surprised to find that the cream works — the heat seems quite bearable. The researchers even run a brain scan to document just how well this cream works. But picture your dismay at learning that the cream was actually inert and contained no anesthetic. Nada. Guileless lab rat that you are, you have been punked. By a placebo. Scenes like ... Read More

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Seeing is Perceiving

November 12, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
A study on the analgesic effects of vision on pain perception using mirrors found that pain may be less felt if you can see the part that's hurting. (stockxpert.com)

A needle hovers tenuously above your arm. The doctor inexplicably takes his time, telling you repeatedly to expect "a bit" of pain as he delivers the shot. Ever so slowly, he lowers the needle, and excruciating apprehension creeps in before the inevitable poke. You close your eyes, anticipating the pain. Finally you feel the needle prick under your skin and then, suddenly, it's over. Next time, try keeping your eyes open — it might hurt less. A recently published study conducted by Matthew R. Longo at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience suggests that viewing the part of your body ... Read More

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How Much Does It Hurt?

September 17, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Sometimes, it's simple to measure the effects of medical treatment: A patient recovers from the flu or she doesn't. Cancer cells disappear or they return. Yet many conversations between doctor and patient yield less-than-scientific answers — intangible descriptions, such as the amount of pain a person is in or how much a drug amplifies his drowsiness. Because researchers employ incongruous tools to measure the unmeasurable, a group of clinical studies devoted to a disease might seem like they were written in different languages. To address this problem, David Cella wants to create the ... Read More

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A Better Way to Anesthetize?

April 16, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

In a discovery that could revolutionize the treatment of chronic and surgery-related pain, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have created a new system of slow-release delivery for anesthetic drugs, producing long-lasting local anesthesia in rats without signs of toxicity in their nerve or muscle cells. The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The idea was to have a single injection that could produce a nerve block lasting days, weeks, maybe even months," lead author Daniel Kohane, of ... Read More

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Accepting the Pain

April 14, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

Fully accepting both the good and bad aspects of one's life — a key tenet of basic Buddhist doctrine — is a challenge for anyone. For a person in chronic pain, such a prescription may seem almost cruel. But people in that often-debilitating situation who manage to accept their condition — not only the pain itself, but also the other unpleasant or stressful realities they face — reap a wide variety of benefits, according to a newly published study. These patients "reported better emotional, physical and social functioning" than those who responded with fear or ... Read More

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