Feeling The Pain?

Feeling the Pain?

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.

Revelation 21:4

An article in New Scientist magazine states that during the years before he died, English poet John Keats wrote hundreds of letters and sonnets to Fanny Brawne, the woman he would have married but for his lack of financial security.^a In one letter to her, Keats wrote, “My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you; I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again; my Life seems to stop there; I see no further.”^b

Tuberculosis took hold of Keats about the time he penned these words, and he died just a year later at age twenty-five. Of course, his poetic work lives on. If fact, his love poems and letters are considered among the most popular in English literature. No doubt about it, Keats’s love for Fanny inspired great poetry, but new research suggests it may have also provided some relief from the discomfort of Keats’s tuberculosis.

A recent Stanford University study explored the analgesic effect of love and found that it directly impacts our overall experience of pain. The study recruited fifteen undergraduates, each of whom described themselves as “intensely in love.” The students were asked to bring along photos of their loved ones and of a good-looking acquaintance. The researchers first asked the participants to hold a block whose temperature could be controlled and report how much pain they felt at different temperatures.

The brain of each person was then scanned while they performed one of three tasks. They did this while holding the temperature-controlled block. For the first two tasks, participants were shown either a picture of their attractive acquaintance or their loved one, and told to think about the person in the picture. The final task was a word-puzzle designed to distract them and known to reduce levels of pain they report.

The temperature block was set at three different levels: no pain, moderate pain, or high pain. After completing each task, each person rated the level of pain. The study showed that both love and distraction reduced pain, and by the same amount—about 40 percent! The photo of the attractive acquaintance provided much less relief.^c

Fascinating, don’t you think? God designed us in such a way that a loving relationship would ease our pain. Good thing, too. Pain has been with us since the beginning (see Genesis 3:16). And it will be with us to the end (see Revelation 21:4). That’s why the comfort of loving each other is doubly rewarding.

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

—Pierre-Auguste Renoir

^a 126

^b 127

^c 128