Intense feelings of love provide pain relief. And the relief is comparable to painkillers or even illegal drugs like cocaine says a new study from Stanford University School of Medicine.
“When people are in their passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain,” said Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Pain Management, associate professor of anesthesia and senior author of the study, which will be published online October 13 in PLoS ONE. “We’re beginning to tease apart some of these reward systems in the brain and how they influence pain. These are very deep, old systems in our brain that involve dopamine -- a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation.”
Doctors aren’t suggesting replacing standard medical care with a love affair, but they are interested to know if the findings can lead to a better understanding of the way neurotransmitters work to relieve pain.
“It runs out that the areas of the brain activated by intense love are the same areas that drugs use to reduce pain,” said Arthur Aron, PhD, a professor of psychology at State University of New York at Stony Brook and one of the study’s authors. And Aron should know: he’s been studying the effects of love for 30 years. “When thinking about your beloved, there is intense activation in the reward are of the brain -- the same area that lights up when you take cocaine, the same area that lights up when you win a lot of money.”
More research is needed, but this could be promising. “This tells us that you don’t have to just rely on drugs for pain relief,” Aron said. “People are feeling intense rewards without the side effects of drugs.”
Source: Stanford University Medical Center, ScienceDaily
Subscribe to this feed
