People who suffer from chronic back pain do not always find relief from available treatments, and scientists continue research to find new therapies that improve their quality of life. Now, the results of a new study may open new avenues to develop effective therapeutic options against this disabling problem.
The researchers examined the key connection between the brain and pain and specifically looked at the importance of pain attributions, that is, people’s beliefs about the underlying causes of their pain, with the goal of reducing the severity of pain. chronic back.
“Millions of people experience chronic pain and many have not found ways to relieve pain, making it clear that something is missing in the way we diagnose and treat people,” says the study’s first author, Yoni Ashar, assistant professor. of internal medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Pain is a ‘false alarm’ generated by the brain
Ashar and his team tested whether attributing pain to mental or brain processes was associated with pain relief in pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), which trains people through psychological techniques to perceive pain as less threatening. pain signals sent to the brain. Their goal was to better understand how people recovered from chronic back pain. The findings were published in JAMA Network Open and showed that after TRD, patients reported that they had experienced a decrease in the intensity of their back pain.
“Our study shows that discussing pain attributions with patients and helping them understand that pain is often ‘in the brain’ can help reduce pain.”
The effects of pain attributions were evaluated in 151 adults (54% of whom were women) experiencing moderately severe chronic back pain. These people participated in a randomized trial of receiving TRD, and it was found that two-thirds of people treated with TRD reported being pain-free or almost pain-free after treatment, compared to only 20% of individuals who acted as controls. and who received placebo.
“Our study shows that discussing pain attributions with patients and helping them understand that pain is often ‘in the brain’ can help reduce pain,” said Ashar, adding: “This study is vitally important because the Patients’ pain attributions are often inaccurate. We found that very few people believed that their brain had anything to do with their pain. “This can be unhelpful and detrimental when planning recovery, as pain attributions guide important treatment decisions, such as whether to undergo surgery or psychological treatment.”
Before treatment, only 10% of participants’ TRP treatment attributions were related to the mind or brain, but after receiving this therapy this figure increased to 51%. The study revealed that the more participants believed their pain was due to mental or brain processes, the greater the reduction in the intensity of chronic back pain they reported.
“These results show that changing perspectives on the role of the brain in chronic pain can allow patients to experience better outcomes,” highlights Ashar, who explains that this may be because when patients understand that their pain is due to brain processes , they learn that there is nothing wrong with their body and that pain is a ‘false alarm’ generated by the brain that they do not know about. You do not have to be afraid.
The researchers hope that their findings will encourage healthcare professionals to talk to their patients about the underlying reasons for their pain and about causes other than biomedical ones. “Often, conversations with patients focus on the biomedical causes of pain. The role of the brain is rarely discussed,” says Ashar. “With this research, we want to give patients the greatest relief possible by exploring different treatments, including those that address the brain drivers of chronic pain.”
