Trying Virtual Reality For Chronic Pain and Anxiety

The Try Guys

18 Aug 202111:58

Summary

TLDRThis video explores the innovative use of virtual reality (VR) for managing chronic pain, anxiety, and related conditions. The host, Zach, meets Celene Tien, the founder of Flowly, to test how VR can help alleviate pain by immersing users in calming, interactive environments. Through biofeedback techniques, users learn to control their breathing and heart rate, which can help manage pain and stress. Zach experiences this firsthand by comparing his pain tolerance during the classic ice bucket challenge with and without VR, showcasing the potential of VR in pain management.

Takeaways

🌍 Virtual reality (VR) can transport users to different places and is now being explored for treating chronic pain and anxiety.
🧠 People suffering from chronic pain are often willing to try anything to find relief, and VR offers a new way to manage pain.
🧊 The ice bucket challenge is used to measure pain tolerance with and without the aid of VR.
🏝️ VR apps like Flowly provide relaxing environments (e.g., a beach with aurora lights) to make chronic pain management more pleasant and effective.
💨 VR uses biofeedback, where users can control their heart rate and pain response through controlled breathing.
📊 Biofeedback helps train the body to reduce pain by controlling heart rate and nervous system activity.
📱 Flowly's VR app is accessible, as it runs on smartphones, making pain management more convenient and portable.
🙍‍♀️ Chronic pain disproportionately affects women, and women of color are often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed, highlighting the need for better accessibility and understanding in healthcare.
📉 VR can help users reduce their heart and breathing rates by 15%, teaching techniques for pain and anxiety management even outside of VR sessions.
🎮 While VR is not a cure-all, it is a valuable tool in a broader pain management toolkit, giving users control over their own health management.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of the video?
-The video focuses on how virtual reality (VR) is being used as a tool to help manage chronic pain, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.
What experiment does Zach participate in during the video?
-Zach participates in an experiment involving the ice bucket challenge, where he tests how long he can keep his hand in ice water. He later tries it again while using VR to see if it helps him withstand the pain for longer.
Who is Celene Tien, and what is her role in the video?
-Celene Tien is the founder of Flowly, a VR app designed to help manage chronic pain and anxiety. She explains how the app works and guides Zach through the experiment.
How does virtual reality help with chronic pain according to Celene Tien?
-Virtual reality helps by using biofeedback techniques, where users can regulate their heart rate and breathing. This reduces the perception of pain by shifting focus away from the pain and immersing users in a relaxing environment.
What is biofeedback, and how is it used in the VR treatment?
-Biofeedback is a technique that teaches users to control physiological functions like heart rate and breathing. In the VR treatment, users follow breathing guides and monitor their heart rate in real-time to help manage pain and anxiety.
What specific technologies are used in the VR setup?
-The VR setup uses a smartphone-based VR headset, a respiration sensor, a skin conductance sensor, and a heart rate sensor to provide biofeedback. The user’s phone powers the VR experience.
How does VR distract from acute pain during the ice bucket challenge?
-VR helps by engaging the brain in a different activity, such as interacting in a virtual world, which distracts from the physical pain. This effect is explained by the gate control theory, which suggests that pain perception can be altered by redirecting attention.
What improvement did Zach experience after using VR during the ice bucket challenge?
-Zach was able to keep his hand in the ice bucket for 41 seconds during the VR session, compared to 30 seconds in the first attempt without VR. This was a 33% improvement.
How does Flowly’s VR app help with mental health conditions like anxiety and depression?
-Flowly's VR app uses immersive environments and biofeedback to help users manage anxiety and depression by calming the nervous system and improving emotional regulation through breathing and heart rate control.
What demographic is most affected by chronic pain, according to Celene Tien?
-Celene explains that the majority of chronic pain patients are women, particularly between the ages of 30 and 50. Women, especially women of color, are often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed, leading to prolonged suffering.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Virtual Reality for Pain Management

The video script introduces the concept of using virtual reality (VR) to treat chronic pain and anxiety. The narrator, Zach, meets with Celene Tien, the founder of flowly, to understand how VR can be applied in pain management. They discuss the idea of using VR to distract from pain, with an ice bucket challenge as an example. The script explains that VR can provide a more pleasant experience for chronic pain management by transporting users to serene environments like a beach with aurora lights. The concept of biofeedback is introduced, which involves controlling physiological functions like heart rate and blood pressure to manage pain. The script also humorously describes the process of setting up sensors for biofeedback, including a chest trap respiration sensor and a brain wave sensor.

05:01

🎮 VR Games for Pain and Anxiety Relief

The script continues with Zach experiencing an interactive VR film called Pippa's Pan, which is described as visually stunning and immersive. He also tries a VR game called Sugar Cat, where the objective is to catch sweets to feed cats while avoiding poop, all while his hand is submerged in ice water. The script explains the gate control theory, which suggests that VR can help manage acute pain by shifting the focus away from the pain to the virtual environment. The experience is said to be typical, with a 30 to 50% increase in the time one can withstand pain. The discussion then turns to the accessibility of VR technology, with the flowly app using a smartphone-powered headset, making it more accessible than traditional biofeedback setups. The script also touches on the social aspect of chronic pain, noting that women and people of color are often underserved in healthcare and that flowly aims to increase accessibility and awareness.

10:02

🧘‍♂️ The Calming Effects of VR Meditation

In the final paragraph, Zach experiences a calming VR meditation session in a world called Wave World. The session involves following a breathing guide and observing real-time heart rate data. The script discusses the effectiveness of VR in reducing heart rate and breathing rate, with the goal of teaching users to manage their pain and anxiety outside of the VR environment. The video concludes with Zach reflecting on his experience, stating that he believes VR can help with chronic pain and anxiety and that he plans to continue using it. The script also highlights the company's mission to make pain management more accessible and to foster conversations around chronic pain, particularly for women and people of color who are often overlooked in healthcare.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual Reality refers to an immersive technology that simulates a user's physical presence in a digital or imagined environment. In the video, VR is used as a therapeutic tool to treat chronic pain, anxiety, and other health conditions. It allows users to escape into calming environments, like sitting on a beach, while simultaneously managing pain through interactive experiences.

💡Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is long-lasting and persistent pain that significantly affects a person's quality of life. The video's focus is on using VR as an innovative method for managing chronic pain. The host, Zach, experiences chronic pain himself, and explores how VR could help people like him cope with the physical and emotional toll of living with ongoing discomfort.

💡Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a therapeutic technique that involves using real-time data from bodily functions, such as heart rate or breathing, to help individuals gain control over certain physiological processes. In the video, biofeedback is combined with VR to help users manage pain by controlling their heart rate and breathing through interactive virtual environments.

💡Ice Bucket Challenge

In the video, Zach participates in an ice bucket challenge, where he places his hand in a bucket of ice to measure his pain tolerance. This experiment is used to demonstrate how VR can increase a person's ability to tolerate pain by shifting their focus away from discomfort and toward a virtual world, thereby increasing the duration they can withstand the cold.

💡Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) refers to the variation in time between heartbeats, which is a measure of the body's stress response. In the video, VR biofeedback helps users regulate their HRV, indicating how well their nervous system is responding to relaxation techniques, which in turn helps manage pain and anxiety.

💡Gate Control Theory

Gate Control Theory is a scientific concept that explains how the brain can modulate pain signals by shifting attention. In the video, VR helps 'close the gate' by diverting the brain's focus away from the pain and onto the virtual environment, thereby reducing the intensity of pain signals the person perceives.

💡Parasympathetic Nervous System

The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the body's rest-and-digest activities, promoting relaxation and reducing stress. In the video, VR and biofeedback are used to activate the parasympathetic system by encouraging slow, deep breathing, which helps calm the body and alleviate pain.

💡Flowly

Flowly is the VR-based application featured in the video, designed to help users manage chronic pain, anxiety, and other conditions through immersive experiences. Flowly combines VR environments with biofeedback, allowing users to control aspects of the virtual world by regulating their breathing and heart rate.

💡Skin Conductance Sensor

A skin conductance sensor measures the electrical conductance of the skin, which is related to sweat gland activity and can indicate stress levels. In the video, this sensor is part of the biofeedback process that helps monitor how the user's body is reacting during their VR session, contributing to the personalized pain management system.

💡Accessibility in Pain Management

Accessibility in pain management refers to making therapeutic tools and treatments more available and easier to use for a broader range of people, particularly marginalized groups like women and people of color. In the video, the creators of Flowly aim to make pain management more accessible through affordable VR solutions, addressing the challenges faced by patients who are often dismissed by the healthcare system.

Highlights

Virtual reality is being used as a tool to help treat chronic pain and anxiety.

Flowly, a company founded by Celene Tien, combines VR with biofeedback to help manage pain and anxiety.

During the ice bucket experiment, participants use VR to see if they can endure pain for longer while immersed in a virtual world.

Users of the Flowly VR app can experience different virtual environments, such as a beach with aurora lights, to enhance relaxation.

Breathing exercises within the app are customized to users, and as their breathing improves, the virtual environment reacts positively (e.g., more aurora lights appear).

Biofeedback helps users control their heart rate and blood pressure, which can lead to better pain management.

The app uses one sensor to track heart rate variability, aiming to smooth the user’s heart rate patterns, which indicates improved nervous system health.

VR has been used since the 1980s for pain management, but Flowly makes it more accessible using just a smartphone and a headset.

VR environments, such as playing a game where users catch sweets for a cat, help distract from acute pain, demonstrating a concept called 'gate control theory'.

Studies show that VR can increase pain tolerance by 30% to 50% by shifting focus away from pain stimuli.

Flowly’s mission is to make pain management more accessible, especially for populations underserved by traditional healthcare systems, like women and people of color.

Many chronic pain patients, especially women of color, often see multiple doctors before receiving a diagnosis or proper care.

The app provides users with tools that can be applied in real life, outside of VR sessions, to help manage chronic pain long-term.

Flowly is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather part of a larger pain management toolkit.

The app’s goal is to teach users how to reduce their heart rate and breathing rate by 15%, which can help alleviate pain.