Counting backwards can ‘help us cope with pain’

NEXT time you are at the dentist and the anaesthetic isn’t quite masking the pain of having a filling, try counting backwards.

In fact, say scientists, counting down from 1,000 in increments of seven can halve how bad the pain seems.

They found mental maths works better than thinking of something calming or beautiful or trying to convince yourself the agony is really not that bad.

‘This task obviously requires such a high level of concentration that it distracts the subject’s attention significantly from the sensation of pain, said Enrico Schulz, neuroscientist and lead author of the study from the Ludwig-Maimilians-Universitaet in Munich. ‘One participant later reported that she had successfully adopted the strategy during the most painful phase of childbirth.’

The researchers exposed their 20 volunteers to a painful cold sensation and they were asked to adopt one of three approaches to try to manage it – counting down from 1,000 in steps of seven, thinking of something pleasant or beautiful, or persuading themselves that the pain wasn’t that bad. During the experiment, they were hooked up to an MRI scanner which could map neural activity in the brain. They were also asked to rank the scale of pain from 0 to 100.

The results revealed the countdown strategy was the most effective of the three. A previous study by the same team had already shown that all three strategies help to alleviate pain.

The team of researchers now plan to test whether their results can be applied to patients with chronic pain.