These Doctors Are Giving Real Pain The Virtual Treatment

[Narrator] It used to be when you got hurt

a doctor would say, Take two of these,

and you'll feel better in the morning.

But soon rather than prescribing pills,

doctors could be sending you home

with virtual reality instead.

If you hurt yourself, the instinct is to rub it.

And in essence what you're doing is you're distracting

your brain by putting in additional signals

that are benign signals, and overwhelming

the brain's ability to feel the painful signal.

Essentially, what VR is doing is kind of like

massaging the brain and sending signals

like a massive spotlight straight into your brain.

And it's so overwhelming that the mind

is not capable of thinking about these other things

like the pain signals coming from the toe.

[Narrator] Doctors like Brennan Spiegel

are testing VR across a wide range of medical applications.

But the big one is pain, specifically chronic pain.

With the nation in the throes of an opioid epidemic,

finding non-addictive ways to help people

manage chronic pain is an urgent public health need.

What we've shown is that we can reduce pain

by almost 25 percent without any opioids

with tremendous results compared to a control condition.

So we did this study where we had a hundred patients.

And half of them got virtual reality for just ten minutes,

and the other half got to watch really nice

relaxation videos in two dimensions.

And when we compared them head to head,

the VR outperformed the relaxation video by a long shot.

[Brennan] So what'd you think?

It's pretty relaxing.

Almost made me forget I was here

'cause you're there.

[Narrator] Spiegel and Cedars Sinai

are working with Los Angeles company, Applied VR,

to run the clinical trials.

They've already shown that shooting balls

at red teddy bears can have a big impact on acute pain.

So now they're testing content meant to have

longer lasting effects, content that facilitates

mindfulness, meditation, and cognitive behavioral therapy.

VR might be new, but these pain management techniques

are well-established.

VR just helps immerse and engage people

who might otherwise be turned off by them.

We see VR as a way to teach them breathing skills

by putting them through a guided breathing exercise in VR.

Going through biofeedback to actually learn

that they can control their heart rate,

their heart rate variability.

That they can actually control factors inside their body

through practice of breath, intentional focus,

and different self-regulation.

That we can teach them the power of distraction.

That you can shift your focus onto something else.

And that thing at the moment may be VR.

But the end goal is to teach skills using technology,

not to depend on it for the relief itself.

[Narrator] Which means the real power of VR

for treating pain may not be what people see

behind the goggles but what happens when they take them off.

Spiegel is now starting a new trial to see

if VR can actually reduce opioid use.

If it works, doctors might soon start prescribing

fewer pills and more virtual reality.