Relief For a Broken Heart:
When your friend tells you "she broke my heart," your first reaction is not to rush your friend to the hospital for a broken heart nor is it to give them an aspirin the way we would treat a headache. We understand our friend's words to be a metaphor reflecting a pain that is not "real."
Then why - and anyone who has ever experienced heartbreak can back me up - does heartbreak hurt so much?
There are two different cortical brain regions involved in physical pain. One is involved in the sensory aspects of pain, the aspect of pain that tells us where the pain is and the intensity of that pain (Lieberman, 2014). The second is involved in the distressing aspects of pain, the respective feeling that makes pain an unpleasant experience... the feeling that makes pain "painful" (Lieberman, 2014).
The distressing aspect of physical pain has been demonstrated to be processed through the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the anterior insula of the brain (Apkarian et al., 2005). Interestingly, considerable neuroscience and neuroimaging research has found an overlap in the neural circuitry underlying the experience of physical pain and social pain, specifically that social rejection shows an increased activity in both the dACC and the anterior insula (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2003).
With the knowledge that social pain activates shared pain-related neural regions, it begs the question, can we treat social pain in the same way we treat physical pain?
The answer is yes.
In 2010, Nathan DeWall and multiple other researchers conducted two studies examining the affects of Tylenol in reducing social pain. Through two experiments, participants were directed to take a daily dose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) or a placebo for the span of three weeks. In the first experiment, the researchers asked the participants to answer a survey daily regarding the relative amounts of social pain they felt that day. The study found that participants who received acetaminophen reported reduced social pain on a daily basis versus those who received the placebo (DeWall et al., 2010).
The second experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure participants' brain activation in the dACC and anterior insula. The study found that participants who took acetaminophen daily showed reduced neural responses in the dACC and anterior insula when faced with a social rejection paradigm while those who had been taking the placebo showed increased dACC and anterior insula, thus reporting to have felt more social pain after rejection (DeWall et al., 2010). Together, the results found that acetaminophen can reduce the feeling and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection.
While a daily Tylenol may not cure a broken heart, it is a surprising treatment to manage the symptoms of social pain. So the next time you are suffering from a broken heart, consider a Tylenol... it might help.
References:
Apkarian, A. V., Bushnell, M. C., Treede, R. D., & Zubieta, J. K. (2005). Human brain mechanisms of pain perception and regulation in health and disease. European journal of pain (London, England), 9(4), 463–484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpain.2004.11.001
DeWall, C. N., MacDonald, G., Webster, G. D., Masten, C. L., Baumeister, R. F., Powell, C., Combs, D., Schurtz, D. R., Stillman, T. F., Tice, D. M., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2010). Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain. Psychological Science, 21(7), 931–937. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610374741
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An FMRI study of social exclusion. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5643), 290–292. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089134
Lieberman, M. D. (2014). Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (Illustrated ed.). Crown.
Ephthalia,
ReplyDeletethis topic is very interesting and shocking. I would have never thought that you could treat social pain in a similar way to physical pain. I would have quickly dismissed it as a placebo effect but as your research articles showed, when compared to those taking he placebo, they felt less pain. My past roommate once went to the doctor because she had chest pain and he deduced that it was because she was about to start with classes again so she was probably stressed. He ended up telling her to take a Tylenol whenever she felt this way and I always assumed that it was a placebo effect, but now I'm wondering if maybe like your posts study, there was an actual reason behind it.
I was looking up some articles and found one that used Tylenol to test the effect it has on empathy for others pain. In the study, the participants read various scenarios about other peoples physical or social pains (like witnessing ostracism in or having to visualize another participant under physical pain from a noise blast). Interestingly enough, the study revealed that like the study you wrote about, the physical painkiller reduced not only social pain, but empathy for pain. I think research about how this can effect populations socially due with lack of empathy rising with the consumption of painkiller.
Article Title: From painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain
Ephthalia,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post and it's gotten me thinking about other ways to potentially treat pain or sadness in unconventional ways.
I worked in a cosmetic dermatology office as a medical assistant and once overheard patients discussing the "anti-depressant like" effects that botox had for them. I wondered if it was associated with their more youthful appearance or if it had to do with some underlying biological mechanism. I found two articles that confirm that botox does help to reduce major depressive symptoms when injected. Interestingly, it does not have to be injected into the face for patients to experience the reduction in depressive symptoms. Injections in the neck and limbs seem to also give similar results, debunking my notion that the improved mood was simply correlated to improved appearance. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much research that biologically describes exactly why botox is an effective anti-depressant.
In conclusion, post breakup we should consider some Tylenol.... and maybe a little botox.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5563881/
https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2020-07-30-headline-news-botox-may-lessen-depression.aspx
This is quite interesting Ephi!
ReplyDeleteAs someone who may have experienced a heart break not that long ago, I definitely would have taken advantage of this information. To be honest I never would have thought of there being any kind of benefit from taking a simple medication such as Tylenol for social pain, something appearing to be so unrelated. Intrigued by this finding I researched what other effects acetaminophen may have on psychological stimulations. A study from Misckowski et al. (2019) investigated the effect of this medication on positive empathy. An association was found between acetaminophen intake and reduced positive empathy due to similarities in the neurochemical basis for physical pain and positive empathy, which is in agreeance to the findings from your cited article.
So, while Tylenol can aid in comforting a broken heart is seems as though it can also deprave us of feeling happiness for others. So now the question lies in, what is more important to an individual?
Sources:
Mischkowski, D., Crocker, J., & Way, B. M. (2019). A social analgesic? acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces positive empathy. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00538