Distorted Body Image Can Reduce Pain

Pain has a significant psychological component, but how significant may surprise you. Things like alien hand syndrome and phantom limb syndrome demonstrate how your brain's view of how your body actually is can differ greatly from reality while still persuading you that it is true. Even with chronic diseases, a skewed body image can actually alter how your mind experiences pain, and it can be tricked in some surprising ways.

In one study, those with persistent arm pain were instructed to look at the painful arm, make a few motions, and then rate the pain they experienced thereafter. The other three involved binoculars, while the first was simply normal. Under various circumstances, they repeated this four times. The other three involved binoculars, while the first was simply normal. They examined the arm in three different ways: without magnification, with increased magnification, and last with inverted binoculars, making their arms appear small. Nothing else had changed.

Participants claimed that when their arm was amplified, the pain was worse. However, they experienced less discomfort when they peered through the reversed binoculars at a little arm. The fact that this wasn't simply in their imaginations was more intriguing. After the experiment, researchers assessed inflammation and found that there was less swelling after seeing the arm made to appear little. Therefore, it had a real, physical impact on pain; it wasn't just a perception.