Love hurts; this is not news, nor is it rocket science. We all know the misery that is the old amour: rejection, dejection, yearning, suffering, sobbing and sulking, we’ve all been there, but hark! dear readers, there is a point to the whole madness after all.
According to researchers at Standford University (and this lovely news item from the New Scientist), love makes real pain hurt less. Yes, just like the old ‘hair of the dog’ trickery, if you are in love you are more likely to cope with the pain of a chronic disease.
The researchers studied 15 undergraduate students all of whom claimed to be ‘intensely in love’ – lucky them, nothing to do with being an undergraduate, not ever having been a jaded grown-up, held a job, paid taxes… Anyway, I digress. These lovesick puppies were subjected to a series of temperature shocks (ha) whilst completing three different distraction exercises. They were asked to rate the level of pain after each exercise, during which they were able to look at either a picture of their loved one or an acquaintance. Lucky for them, they were allowed a good-looking acquaintance.
The picture of their love interest was found to reduce pain as much as the clever distraction exercises did, only in a different way. Apparently, the pain relief that comes from being in love takes place in the same part of the brain that processes the euphoria of chocolate and the effects from cocaine and other drugs!
So there you go folks, it seems as if all those addictive emotions all reside in the same part of our brain, or at least, they are processed there. But between cocaine being a life-destroying substance and chocolate making you fat, at least you know that if you are addicted to love it might hurt less in the long run, should you be so unlucky as to also get a painful long-term disease.
Who said there wasn’t a silver lining?!
Science Vogue 