Plenty of research shows that your brain's superpowers can help conquer the most stubborn of miseries, including bad backs, cancer pain, arthritis, tension headaches and inflammatory bowel disease. The best part? You don't have to move to a mountaintop, sit on a rock-hard meditation cushion or shell out big bucks for a meditation instructor to get results.
In a new study from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, people who meditated for just 20 minutes a day saw their pain tolerance rise in four days. Volunteers learned an ultra-easy technique called mindfulness meditation, which teaches you to focus on your breath and stay in the present moment, and not to worry about what's ahead. Researchers tested the volunteers' pain thresholds with mild electric shocks and found that shocks considered "high pain" before meditating felt mild afterward. Volunteers who didn't learn the meditation had unchanged responses to the shocks. (No, we can't imagine why anyone volunteered for this, though we're grateful that they did.) (MORE)
Source: Washington Examiner
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