The men and women they use different biological systems to reduce pain so they experience relief differently according to a new study that could help explain why women suffer more chronic pain and respond less to opioid treatments.
In new research evaluating meditation for chronic low back pain, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that Men and women use different biological systems to relieve pain.
Thus, while men relieve pain by releasing endogenous opioidsthe body’s natural pain relievers, women turn to other non-opioid routes.
The Synthetic opioids, such as morphine and fentanyl, are the most powerful pain relievers available. It is known that the Women respond poorly to opioid therapies, which use synthetic opioid molecules to bind to the same receptors as natural endogenous opioids. This aspect of opioids helps explain why they are so powerful as pain relievers, but also why they carry a significant risk of dependence and addiction.
Women are more likely to become addicted to opioids because they are less sensitive to them
“Dependency develops because people start taking more opioids when the original dose stops working,” explains Dr. Fadel Zeidan, Professor of Anesthesiology and Senior Lecturer in Empathy and Compassion Research at the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at the University of California, San Diego.
“Although speculative, our findings suggest that perhaps one reason why Women are more likely to become addicted to opioids is that they are biologically less sensitive to them and they need to take more to experience any pain relief,” he adds.
The study combined data from two clinical trials in which A total of 98 people participatedboth healthy and diagnosed with chronic low back pain.
The participants underwent a training program in meditation and then they practiced meditation while receiving a placebo or a high dose of naloxone, a drug that stops the action of synthetic and endogenous opioids.
At the same time, they experienced a very painful but harmless thermal stimulus on the back of their leg. The researchers measured and compared how much pain relief you experienced meditation when the opioid system was blocked versus when it was intact.
According to the study results, blocking the opioid system with naloxone inhibited meditation-based pain relief in men, which suggests that men rely on endogenous opioids to reduce pain.
The naloxone increased the Meditation-based pain relief in womensuggesting that women rely on non-opioid mechanisms to reduce pain.
In both men and women, people with chronic pain experienced greater pain relief with meditation than healthy participants.
“These results underscore the need for more sex-specific pain therapies, because many of the treatments we use don’t work as well in women as they do in men,” says Zeidan.
The researchers conclude that if the treatment of pain according to the sex of the person, it may be possible to improve patient outcomes and reduce opioid dependence and misuse.
“There are clear disparities in pain treatment between men and women“But until now we had not observed a clear biological difference in the use of their endogenous systems,” says Zeidan. “This study provides the first clear evidence that sex-based differences in pain processing are real and should be taken more into account when developing and prescribing pain treatments.”
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