In Pain? Your Favorite Food May Get You Through It

Aug. 1, 2008 — -- The next time you get a shot or have a migraine, don't try and see yourself lying on a warm beach. Instead, picture a luscious chocolate bar or digging into a bowl of creamy, buttery mashed potatoes.

Building on established ideas that shifting the mind's attention away from pain can reduce sensitivity to pain, researchers now say that fantasizing about food may be an effective coping strategy for both chronic and acute pain.

"Imagery tactics are the most potent cognitive behavior interventions for pain," said Dr. Hamid Hekmat, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and lead author of the study. "We found that food fantasies such as imagining eating your favorite ice cream, chocolate cake or meal had a strong pain-attenuating effect. It enhanced mood, reduced anxiety, and helped coping with ice water pain."

And, in the midst of a crisis, when the mind is flailing for anything to latch on to for distraction, it can help to know what to focus on that will alleviate pain.

For his study, Hekmat twice asked 60 healthy subjects to submerge their hand in icy water to determine their pain threshold and tolerance. During the second round, participants were instructed to imagine a favorite meal in detail, a neutral scene, such as people walking, or they were not instructed to fantasize about anything.

With food fantasy intervention, subjects were able to withstand pain twice as well and had a higher pain threshold than when they didn't fantasize. Subjects who did not fantasize about anything showed almost no improvement in pain tolerance and threshold while subjects who pictured a neutral scene showed minor or no improvement.

Hekmat said chocolate was the most common food fantasy, reported by 32 percent of the participants. Roast dinners were next (31 percent) followed by pasta (14 percent), pizza (8 percent) and fruit (4 percent.)

The research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society in May 2008 in Tampa, Fla.

But the source of pain can go beyond the body.

"Pain is an emotional response and, as such, can be modified by emotions," said Dr. Peter Staats, an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and another author on the study. "A positive emotional thought of any type will function as a dampening effect on pain."