# Study: Expecting Pain Relief May Help



## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

FYI http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...e/brain_power_2


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## SpAsMaN* (May 11, 2002)

It's like a reply to my post in Dr.D thread wherei asked them if they really are better.


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## kel1059 (Feb 28, 2003)

that was not too clear. do the women see the man's hand jump from the shock and then react or are they able to sense that the man is being hurt. very interesting.i believe that millions of years has allowed for our brains to develop a complex built in mechanism whereby we can initiate some type of healing or scramble our brain such that we are able cancel out various stimulias dr benson refers to the plac effect as the "wellness memory". a much better description if you ask me.


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## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

The prefrontal cortex, is also implicated in IBS and is also associated with anxiety."What would be an example of new understanding?Well one example is that we're starting to understand how the brain is responding to the pain in IBS. There have been some studies done where they've artificially created a kind of an irritable bowel by placing a balloon to stretch the bowel, and that produces pain. Then they've compared people with IBS to non-IBS, or "normal" individuals. And what they've found is that when you stretch the bowel-and use PET scans to monitor the response-in normal individuals, certain areas of the brain that register pain respond and release chemicals called neurotransmitters that suppress and lower the pain. But it seems that doesn't happen as well in people with IBS. In fact, *in people with IBS another area of the brain responds that is associated with anxiety.* So what we find is that people with IBS, aside from having a bowel problem, may have some difficulty in terms of the way their brain is regulating the pain." http://www.aboutibs.org/Publications/clinicalIssues.html


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## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

Kel, I can fly with the wellness memory comment for sure. The brain records, stores and remembers everything.


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