Meditate your pain away

Results from a National Institutes of Health study reveal that people who meditate have significantly reduced perception of pain, which is good news for chronic pain sufferers.

In the study, 12 people who were longtime practitioners of transcendental meditation showed a 40- to 50-percent lower brain response to pain compared to a control group of 12 healthy individuals. When the control group was then taught to meditate, and practiced for five months, they experienced 40- to 50-percent decreases in pain response.

According the American Academy of Pain Medicine, 50 million people worldwide suffer from chronic pain. In the U.S., the cost of treating pain annually is estimated at $100 billion.

— Source: Medical News Today