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Is it?


Love better than drugs in reducing pain: neuroscientists

Neuroimaging researchers at Stanford School of Medicine have linked feelings of the early stages of a new romantic relationship (intense feelings of euphoria, well-being, and preoccupation with the romantic partner) to activation of reward systems in the human brain.

The results of those studies may be relevant to pain management in humans, suggest the researchers, since it is known that pharmacologic activation of reward systems can substantially reduce pain.

They hypothesized that pain relief evoked by viewing pictures of a romantic partner would be associated with neural activations in reward-processing centers. In a  functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, they examined 15 individuals in the first nine months of a new romantic relationship.

The participants completed three tasks under periods of moderate and high thermal pain: viewing pictures of their romantic partner; viewing pictures of an equally attractive and familiar acquaintance; and a word-association distraction task previously demonstrated to reduce pain.

The partner and distraction tasks both significantly reduced self-reported pain, although only the partner task was associated with activation of reward systems.

Greater pain-reduction while viewing pictures of a romantic partner was associated with increased activity in several reward-processing regions, including the caudate head, nucleus accumbens, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — regions not associated with distraction-induced analgesia.

The results suggest that the activation of neural reward systems via non-pharmacologic means can reduce the experience of pain.

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It is addictive...

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"Yes it does... the same face that seemed to heal you from all the wounds that are so deep in your flesh now seems only to reveal how empty your scared carcass is... her face hurts me, to see it now..."

this was something I wrote in a conversation with a friend years ago...

So maybe they will need to do a follow up on this in a year to see how the 15 couples are doing

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Originally Posted by John Dohnut:
It is addictive...

And kicking it's a ****!

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I believe it is true ...

From my experiences, visiting critically ill family members in the hospital ... they would become more responsive and seemed to be in less pain when I was there.  I know when my husband was at the end, his vitals would kick up anytime I talked or touched him.

When I am in the midst of a lupus flare, my sons can sit and talk to me and comfort me and I swear the pain goes away.

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I'm taking a bio-spiritual approach to this. I do believe that biochemistry and spirituality complement each other as far as our earthly experiences go. For example, have you ever experienced pain, physical or emotional, so great that the agony seemed devilishly overpowering, but while during that, you experience very minute fragments of time where you saw yourself experiencing this agony, but from another perspective where the agony had no major bearing? I'm not talking about any kind of out of body or astral projection experience; this perspective I'm referring to is still within and of you, but it exists at a different level of consciousness than our typical daily self.

Ok, blah blah blah, that in mind, when there's a very deep and resonate love between two people that transcends our daily physical lives, I do believe our bodies react to that resonance with the release of various organic chemicals that play a part in how our active consciousness reacts to bodily pain, and in this case, reduce pain or painlessness. But then everything I've described here could be psychosomatic or psychosis depending on what you believe in. But hey, whatever works...

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A mentor of mine once said, "Infatuation is God's way of numbing your brain ... because if you really thought about what you were going to do, most would never do it."

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Originally Posted by Scott Terry:

Originally Posted by John Dohnut:
It is addictive...

And kicking it's a ****!

lol

they should warn people about overdosing

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Originally Posted by John Dohnut:

Originally Posted by Scott Terry:

Originally Posted by John Dohnut:
It is addictive...

And kicking it's a ****!

lol

they should warn people about overdosing

I'd be willing to TRY overdosing on it

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"Love is the drug that I'm thinking of!"  

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Too bad they cant bottle it...

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Originally Posted by John Dohnut:
"Yes it does... the same face that seemed to heal you from all the wounds that are so deep in your flesh now seems only to reveal how empty your scared carcass is... her face hurts me, to see it now..."

WOW...I can relate to this!...after going through a serious breakup after a 34 year relationship and 28 year marriage last year...very powerful words!!

Originally Posted by John Dohnut:
So maybe they will need to do a follow up on this in a year to see how the 15 couples are doing

agree with this too...all new relationship's have that **high** of infatuation at first...and never get to the real meaning of love...

to answer the original question...

I know I would rather be in love and be loved than not...it is the best feeling in life to know you have someone in your life that you truly connect with and yes...when a stressful day has happened...that one person is the person you count on...so in essence it would make sense that they would also be the one who could alleviate pain as well