Friday, February 11, 2011

Watch Your Body



This week has been a week of pains in GTF Infozone. The previous post was all about how tart cherry does wonders in muscles recovery. But for today, you are about to see another amusing fact, which it might come in very handy for yourself whenever you feel painful in certain parts of your body.

Scientists from UCL (University College London) and University of Milano-Bicocca from Italy did a research recently about how to reduce pain without using any medications or consumptions of any edible things. What they found in their study was pretty amazing. They claimed that by looking at the body parts which are painful, somehow it has an effect where it can reduce the pain of the person.

What they did on the study, was they picked a number of participants (18 of them) and had a heat probe on their left hand. The idea behind this study was to increase the heat temperature very gradually. When the participants feel that they began to experience pain, the foot pedals provided play an important role, when this pedal was activated, the whole process comes to a halt. Throughout the process, scientists used mirrors to manipulate what the participants saw during the experiment.

Results showed that those who looked closely to their left hand could sustain the pain for as much as 3 degree celcius higher than those who did not look at their left hand, or those who looked at the wooden box which was placed near their left hand. The effect appeared to be even clearer when scientists next started to use convex or concave mirrors to show the hand, where it can enlarge or reduce the size of what the participants see during the process. When the picuture of the hand as enlarged, participants could tolerate up to even greater levels of heat before feeling pain. But when the picture was reduced in size, participants reported feeling pain compare to the moments where they were looking at their hands at normal size.

Researchers thus suggested that the pain is closely associated with brain maps of the skins. Hence, if pain strikes you in the future, if allowed, please remember to look at the parts which trouble you, so that your biological painkiller can be put into good use!

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