Visually induced analgesia during massage treatment in chronic back pain patients

Abstract

This study shows that inducing visual induced analgesia during massage treatment can be helpful in alleviating chronic pain.

Seeing the site of treatment improves habitual pain but not cervical joint position sense immediately after manual therapy in chronic neck pain patients

“…The decrease in habitual pain intensity is in line with a recent study where real‐time visual feedback, when given as an adjunct to massage therapy, reduced habitual pain (Loffler et al., ). The results of this study cautiously support the use of real‐time feedback as an adjunct to manual therapy for habitual pain reduction; however, it does not provide any direct evidence for this interpretation as the study did not contain a condition with visual feedback alone.…”

Visually induced analgesia in a deep tissue experimental pain model: A randomised crossover experiment

“…However, to do so may have introduced an additional confounder to interpretation as all other conditions required visually attending to the location of the leg. The perceived pain scores during movement with DOMS may be viewed as being relatively low and, although they approximate those reported in other studies of visual analgesia (Torta et al., ; Löffler et al., ), it is possible that different results to those presented here might be apparent in tasks with greater pain intensity. While we are confident in suggesting this result does represent an effect of visual distortion on pain perception, it is important to bear in mind this is an experimental pain induction methodology.…”

“…(); Löffler et al. (); Wand et al. () observed analgesic effects with vision of the back in people with chronic back pain.…”

“…Diers et al (2015); L€ offler et al (2017); Wand et al (2012) observed analgesic effects with vision of the back in people with chronic back pain. Wand et al (2012) used a mirror to allow subjects to view their backs, while Diers et al (2015) andL€ offler et al (2017) used real-time video feedback. Torta et al (2015) suggest that the use of an illusory image could create a conflict between the somatosensory, visual and proprioceptive representations, requiring higher cognitive processing levels such that the illusion rather than visualisation is what produces the analgesic effect and this may explain the differences in the results seen.…”

“…Expanding this phenomenon to clinical pain, low back pain patients viewing their own back reported an immediate reduction in their habitual pain while lying down (Diers et al., ), during massage (Löffler et al., ) and during movement (Wand et al., ). These observations suggest visualisation may positively influence the clinical pain state.…”