Pain reduced if you do not look away

Almaty. February 11. Kazakhstan Today - A study has revealed watching yourself having an injection can reduce your pain, Kazakhstan Today reports.

What you look at can influence how much pain you feel, a study has revealed, BBC reported.

Contrary to many people's compulsion to look away during a painful event such as an injection, scientists found that looking at your body - in this case the hand - reduces the pain experienced.

The team also showed that magnifying the hand to make it appear larger cut pain levels further still.

The University College London (UCL) and University of Milan-Bicocca research, which was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), was carried out with the help of 18 volunteers.

The scientists applied a heat probe to each participant's hand, gradually increasing the temperature. As soon as this began to feel painful, the probe was removed and the temperature was recorded.

Patrick Haggard, professor of cognitive neuroscience from UCL, explained: "This gives us a measure of the pain threshold, and it is a safe and reliable way of testing when the brain pathways that underline pain become active."

The scientists then used a set of mirrors to manipulate what the volunteers saw.

The team found that volunteers could tolerate on average 3C more heat when they were looking at their hand in the mirror, compared with when their hand was obscured by a block of wood.

Professor Haggard said: "You always advise children not to look when they are having an injection or a blood sample taken, but we have found that looking at the body is analgesic - just looking at the body reduces pain levels.

"So my advice would be to look at your arm, but try to avoid seeing the needle - if that's possible. "

In another experiment, the researchers used convex mirrors to enlarge the appearance of the participant's hand. They found that doing so meant the volunteers were able to tolerate higher temperatures.

Conversely, when the team made the volunteers' hands look smaller, their pain threshold decreased.

The studies are helping to show how pain is processed in the brain

The researchers said the fact that pain levels were directly proportional to the size the body was viewed at was helping them to better understand the neurological basis of pain.

The researchers hope that understanding more about the science underpinning pain could one day help to lead to new treatments for chronic conditions.

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