The new way to beat pain? Confusing it!

ZAPPING nerves with electrical signals that retrain the brain could be a new way to treat chronic pain.

The treatment is being tested on 20 patients with pain from pancreatic cancer at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.

They will undergo ten 45minute sessions when the painful area will be treated with mild electrical impulses that the patient will not feel. The electrical impulses come in different frequencies and stimulate different types of nerve fibre at the same time.

This is thought to ‘scramble’ the pain signals travelling to the brain so that it no longer associates them with pain. This is unlike standard nerve stimulation which blocks the signals.