Is mindfulness effective with chronic pain? Many practitioners asked this question in a recent survey. They also wanted to know how they could convince their skeptical clients to give mindfulness a try.
The connection between mindfulness and healing emotional pain, like stress or anxiety, may make more sense to your patients. But physical pain? That’s a big leap. Dr. Natalia Morone and a team of researchers from the University of Pittsburg addresses both patient compliance and chronic pain in a study published in the Journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain.
The study looks at the feasibility of older adults maintaining a meditation practice as well as it’s effectiveness with chronic back pain. The average age of participants in this study was 75.
In a randomized controlled study to see whether an eight-session mindfulness meditation program had any effect on the patient, researchers used baseline, 8-week and 3-month follow-up measures to asses pain, physical function, attention and quality of life.
Compared to the control group, the intervention group displayed significant improvement in the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire, Activities Engagement and Physical Function. In addition, two of the participants in the trial stopped using their canes by the end of the 8-week program.
What about compliance? Average class attendance for the intervention group was 6.7 out of 8 – a good showing. The older adults meditated an average of 4.3 days a week for an average of 31.6 minutes per day.
This study, the first of it’s kind with older adults, shows us that a mindfulness-based practice can help relieve chronic pain, and equally as important, that it’s possible to get an older population on board. According to the National Pain Foundation, 73% to 80% of the entire elderly population have reported various chronic pain symptoms from arthritis to osteoporosis. So how can you convince a reluctant patient with chronic pain to follow a practice you know can help them?
This is a important question, one we address in some of our mindfulness courses.
In this series, we look at mindfulness and how it affects the brain – and most importantly – how you can use it in a clinical setting.
Mindfulness and meditation are excellent pain management tools. At Las Vegas Recovery Center we encourage clients to explore many holistic practices to help in managing their pain, including Chi Kung, Yoga, Reiki, Acupuncture, and Body Scan (a mindfulness practice). The ability to recognize pain, separate the pain from emotions, and accept the pain is a major step toward reducing pain and increasing function.
Mindfulness and meditation are excellent pain management tools. At Las Vegas Recovery Center we encourage clients to explore many holistic practices to help in managing their pain, including Chi Kung, Yoga, Reiki, Acupuncture, and Body Scan (a mindfulness practice). The ability to recognize pain, separate the pain from emotions, and accept the pain is a major step toward reducing pain and increasing function.
Thank you for this thorough presentation of mindfulness and it’s applications. It is a great service.
Could I get the reference to Dr. Natalia Morone’s research re: pain management with mindfulness? thank you.
K. Avila
What I find within meditation is the ability to pay attenntion to both feeling and ideas without becoming attached to them. What I mean by that is I may be feeling psychological or physical pain. One type of “illness” is tinnitus -ringing in my ears. There are really two sounds; on reflecting my heartbeat the other a solid steady ring. For some people this is very disturbing. For me it is a reminder to begin meditation which in this case means paying attention to and controlling my breathing. Psychological pain can be self examined by taking a step back an looking at it. Of course physical pain is different and meditation is not like taking an advil
Regards
Larry Anderson
…been working with older folks teaching them both top down (meditation) and bottom up (Tai Chi and qigong; several of them, in the past, have had strokes. They noticed the benefits as did their physicians.
To put it simply; they loved the meditation both moving and stationary. Benefits from the practices were immediate and obvious.
The issue, if there is one, is practice, practice, practice. Or to paraphrase the Daoist Book of the Days “Persistence in the face of adversity brings its own reward.”
Since I’m just about 75, I know, first hand, the territory they’re in.