Feel the burn: 90% of people heal faster by focusing on their pain — Israeli study

Reporter at The Times of Israel

Which works better to heal inflammation — distraction from the pain or attention to it?

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New research from Bar-Ilan University found that contrary to popular belief, 90% of people who focused their conscious attention on an inflamed spot on their body recovered faster than those who tried to ignore it.

The landmark study, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrates for the first time that focused attention can dial down acute biological inflammation in real time.

“I’ve studied humans for more than 20 years, and this was the most striking effect I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Liron Rozenkrantz, assistant professor at the university’s Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, who supervised the study. Dr. Nofar Mizrachi led and conducted the research in collaboration with Prof. Menachem Rottem, head of the Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Service at Emek Medical Center in Afula.

The researchers said the findings could help people learn to use targeted attention training alongside traditional medical treatments to relieve chronic inflammatory conditions and autoimmune diseases.

“Our cognitive processes can shape how the body regulates itself,” Rozenkrantz said. “Feeling pain does contribute to the healing process.”

“People are aware of the placebo effect, when someone is given a sham drug, and they think it’s real and they get better,” Rozenkrantz said.

Researchers in her lab take that idea one step further to explore how people’s perceptions can alter a disease’s progress or improve treatment efficacy.

“We tend to think of the immune system, injury, or inflammation resolution as something that can take care of itself without any involvement of any high cognitive function,” Rozenkrantz said. “But what happens if the mind focuses on the pain? Does directing the brain toward the injury actually impact its healing? That’s never been studied in humans before.”

To test this question, the lab invited 57 people, aged 20 to 45, to participate in the experiment.

“We did a very standardized procedure to induce acute inflammation in the skin,” Rozenkrantz explained. “It’s called a histamine skin prick test, and basically it’s like an allergy test to cause acute skin inflammation.”

“Within less than 30 seconds, you already see the response,” she said. “It’s sort of like the skin has been stung by something. There’s a bump in the middle, and a flare-up or redness all around it.”

The inflammation lasts about 20 to 30 minutes, and then it resolves quickly, Rozenkrantz said.

During the experiment, Mizrachi induced inflammation in the participants, who were instructed to pay attention to the sensations in their inflamed arm, or were given videos to watch to remain distracted from thinking about the inflammation.

“We simply told them to pay attention to sensations arising from the inflamed site,” she said. “If attention draws away from it, then bring your attention back. We did the same thing when they were distracted, explaining that if their attention wandered, to return to what was happening on the screen.”

During the experiments, the researchers measured physical swelling and redness with a standard ruler at six distinct time intervals over 20 minutes.

They also recorded heart rate, skin temperature, pulse and breathing rates to monitor the body’s involuntary nervous system.

“The results were significantly different within one minute,” she said.

“Nearly 90 percent of participants showed less inflammation when paying attention to it, with total swelling and redness measuring about 1.5 times smaller than when they were distracted,” she said. “The brain can help regulate immune responses.”

The study could open new pathways to future research.

“This is one of the more clever and fascinating studies done in humans, and it may open new possibilities for treatment based on how the brain and immune system interact,” Asya Rolls, professor of neuroscience at Tel Aviv University’s School of Neurobiology, Biochemistry and Biophysics, who was unconnected to the study, told The Times of Israel.

“We already know that the brain can affect immunity through stress, expectations, conditioning, and the autonomic nervous system,” Rolls said. “But this study goes a step further by showing that attention, something we can actively control, can change an ongoing immune response.”

One of the “biggest challenges” in human studies is showing causality, Rolls said. “The study does this particularly well because the researchers experimentally changed where the same person focused their attention while keeping the inflammatory challenge the same.”

For Rozenkrantz, the study opens the door to new thinking about how people can heal after injury.

“If you underwent surgery and you have scars or stitches, if you pay a little bit more attention to the pain, would it help the scars resolve in a better way?” she asked.

Although she is focused on the physical aspect of healing, she speculated that with emotional trauma or PTSD, some researchers “would probably agree that you need to touch your pain to resolve it.”

“We’re now more aware of what thoughts can do,” she said. “They’re not just passive; they are actually active. We don’t know everything, but it’s a question we’re asking, and something we’d all be happier to learn more about.”

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