While being in love doesn't make you invincible, a study proved that it does improve your ability to handle pain. "When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain," Sean Mackey, physician-scientist, professor, and chief of the Division of Pain Management at Stanford, revealed.
As part of his study, Mackey, along with Arthur Aron, a professor of psychology at State University of New York at Stony Brook, asked 15 undergraduate students to bring in pictures of their partners as well as pictures of equally attractive acquaintances. While showing the participants the pictures, the researchers used a device that caused "mild pain." Meanwhile, the participants' brains were also scanned. The results were clear: Love was able to reduce participants' pain — "and at much higher levels than by concentrating on the photo of the attractive acquaintance."
"It turns out that the areas of the brain activated by intense love are the same areas that drugs use to reduce pain," Aron revealed. He noted, "This tells us that you don't have to just rely on drugs for pain relief."
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