Hurt feelings? Try Tylenol.

Updated May 19, 2014.

Written and reviewed by a Board Certified physician. See the Medical Review Board About.com.

You've probably heard the saying, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Scientific evidence shows that this claim that "the name is not hurt" is simply not true. I Nsults and social rejection hurts the same way as a broken bone.

How the brain records the social pain

Thanks to the technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and lesion studies of animal origin, the researchers found that the same part of our brain registered the social pain, the physical pain, ie the anterior cingulate cortex registers (ACC). So it makes sense why your heart literally shattered after a breakup, or why you feel like you hit by a truck after the loss of a loved one. Likewise, this finding could also make sense why a person may, by practices of self-injury, such as access cutting mitigate the social and emotional complaints. Our physical and emotional systems are inextricably linked.

Why social pain hurts

While many of us in the States have a duty to the values of autonomy and individuality that we ultimately social beings, much as we may try to deny it. The pain associated with rejection, to be a sign for us in danger, since the peak of the fever during infection. There are nerves, which tells us we are in trouble if we said, the tribe, so that we can resolve this problem and to survive. Our species has evolved to be cooperative. Although technological advances of the modern age we have the ability to survive in isolation given the healthiest of us have strong social relationships and good marriages.

Tylenol can help with the pain of rejection?

If the record of the physical and social pain in the same part of the brain, it makes sense to ask whether a typical painkillers such as paracetamol might help bearable feelings of rejection. Naomi Eisenberger psychologist C. Nathan DeWall and colleagues asked, found the same problem and that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, can help to reduce feelings of social pain.

To determine whether Tylenol can help with the social pain Eisenberger, DeWall and his colleagues had volunteers a Tylenol once a day for three weeks. The volunteers were then incubated with subjects taking a placebo daily for three weeks in comparison, depending on their experiences of rejection. The participants reported less moral Tylenol than the placebo group prejudice. Further, when in a situation that put social exclusion, fMRI showed that those who had taken Tylenol, showed less activity in the area of the brain registers the pain in the placebo group.

The Lead

This research does not exist to encourage everyone to treat themselves with Tylenol start, but shows how to connect our social, emotional and physical systems really are as human beings. In any case helps shed light on the importance of social ties and support for our well-being and survival.

_Swell

_{Eisenberger, NI and Lieberman, MD (2004). Why rejection hurts. A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain trends in Cognitive Science, 8 (7), 294-300.}

_{DeWall, CN, MacDonald, G., Webster, GD, masts, CL, Baumeister, RF, Powell, C. Combs, D., Schurtz, DR, Stillman, TF, Tice, DM and Eisenberger, NI (2010). Acetaminophen relieves pain. Notes on the social behavior and neural Psychological Science, 21 (7), 931-937.}