Painful medical procedures can be less agonizing if you do this

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

Painful medical procedures are less agonizing if you trust your doctor, according to a new study.

Scientists say the brain responds to pain in different ways depending on whether a physician is seen as trustworthy or not.

Researchers in the US found pain inflicted by less trusted doctors was more intense and unpleasant.

Patients were found to have more activity in parts of the brain that cause pain when they were being seen to by a less trustworthy doctor.

The neurologic pain signature pattern- a brain pattern that measures responses to pain- was stronger when patients were given painful treatment by a less trusted medic.

The more mistrust in medical organizations someone was found to have, the more brain activity they were found to have in brain regions involved in pain, attention and emotion when experiencing and evaluating pain.

For the study, participants took part in simulated painful medical procedures with different virtual doctors who appeared more or less trustworthy.

The virtual doctors were dressed in white coats but had faces that appeared trustworthy or less trustworthy.

Their brain activity during the simulations was measured through functional MRI scans.

Researchers compared their responses to the painful procedure- a real painful heat simulation on their arms- and participants’ ratings of how much pain they were in when treated by more and less trusted doctors.

The research was inspired by earlier studies showing patients’ trust in their doctor can influence health outcomes, including responses to pain.

The same team, from the University of Miami in Florida, found in an earlier study that patients placed more trust in doctors they felt “culturally similar” to.

For the new study, they wanted to understand how the brain processed these different responses to pain.

Lead study author Dr. Steven Anderson said: “Although we had previously found that how much you trust your doctor can influence your experience of pain, there was surprisingly little known about the brain basis for this effect.

“The takeaway from this study is not necessarily that we need to train doctors to make different facial expressions.

“Rather, our results demonstrate that even small changes to the doctor-patient relationship may be enough to decrease patients’ pain.

“Even non-verbal aspects of the doctor-patient relationship make a difference in the patient’s pain, which can inform interventions aimed at reducing patient pain and pain disparities.”

The team says their research has far-reaching implications for understanding health disparities because many studies have shown people from marginalized groups- such as people of color, lower-income individuals and women - often trust the health care system less in general and doctors in particular.

The findings were published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.