The Effect of Praying on Endogenous Pain Modulation and Pain Intensity in Healthy Religious Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Experiment
The Effect of Praying on Endogenous Pain Modulation and Pain Intensity in Healthy Religious Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Experiment
With this study the investigators wish to examine the effect of prayer on pain intensity and on the conditioned pain modulation in healthy religious university students.
There has been a call for a model that incorporate spirituality in the biopsychosocial framework .The biopsychosocial- spiritual model recognizes the impact of the religious factors in modulating the biology of pain.
The aim of this study is to measure the effect of praying as an intervention on conditioned pain modulation and on pain intensity.
The investigators hypothesize that prayer would increase conditioned pain modulation compared to a no prayer control group in a healthy religious population.
The investigators hypothesize that participants engaging in active prayer will show a higher increase in conditioned pain modulation compared to those engaging in passive prayer or no prayer.
The present study is a randomized controlled trial comparing the effect of two types of prayer, the passive and the active prayer and no prayer, on conditioned pain modulation using the heat protocol and on pain intensity. Participants are to be randomly assigned to 2 groups: the prayer group and the control group.
The control group is of (n=50) participants and the prayer group is (n=150) participants to be divided according to the style of praying identified by the prayer function scale into active and passive prayer group.
Appropriate statistical analyses will be performed to evaluate and compare treatment effects.
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria: