Chronic pain can be totally debilitating to our bodies and our minds. We can habituate to pain triggers so when something more minor happens that is similar to a major pain experience, we can react as if the major experience were happening. An example comes from the person who developed an approach to change the body’s experience of pain, Lorimer Moseley. Moseley almost died from a snakebite which he experienced as extreme pain from the bit and the poison.
Months after he recovered, a twig brushed against his ankle where he was bitten, and he experienced the same extreme pain as when he was bit. This is the brain developing a hyper-trigger to a minor event happening. What’s being triggered are our peripheral nerve ending, which are located all over the body. These nerve endings send the signal to the brain, which can cause the twig to be viewed as the same level of intensity as the original snake bit. This signal that the body needs to be protected causes the brain to immediately start making the body hurt. When this happens, it means the person’s body has become over sensitive.
By using brain imaging equipment, researchers have shown that individuals who expected greater pain showed more neural activity in regions of the brain involved with fear and threat responses, The surprising thing is that these nerve endings began to fire even before the person experienced the unpleasant stimulus used in the study.
Mosley has developed the Pain Revolution to retrain the body on how its responds to pain expectations by using a 2-prong approach. The first prong is educating the person to understand that pain is an output of the brain designed to protect you. It’s not something that comes from the tissues of the body. This notion of educating the person on this is probably the key to Mosley’s system working.
The second prong is for the patient to gradually increase physical activity and not let a little pain stand in the way. Over time, the patient retrains their pain system by reducing its over sensitivity.
So…rather than taking and possibly getting addicted to opioids, we may have an option for reducing and eliminating the body’s response to pain.
(Reported Discover, March 2019)
Months after he recovered, a twig brushed against his ankle where he was bitten, and he experienced the same extreme pain as when he was bit. This is the brain developing a hyper-trigger to a minor event happening. What’s being triggered are our peripheral nerve ending, which are located all over the body. These nerve endings send the signal to the brain, which can cause the twig to be viewed as the same level of intensity as the original snake bit. This signal that the body needs to be protected causes the brain to immediately start making the body hurt. When this happens, it means the person’s body has become over sensitive.
By using brain imaging equipment, researchers have shown that individuals who expected greater pain showed more neural activity in regions of the brain involved with fear and threat responses, The surprising thing is that these nerve endings began to fire even before the person experienced the unpleasant stimulus used in the study.
Mosley has developed the Pain Revolution to retrain the body on how its responds to pain expectations by using a 2-prong approach. The first prong is educating the person to understand that pain is an output of the brain designed to protect you. It’s not something that comes from the tissues of the body. This notion of educating the person on this is probably the key to Mosley’s system working.
The second prong is for the patient to gradually increase physical activity and not let a little pain stand in the way. Over time, the patient retrains their pain system by reducing its over sensitivity.
So…rather than taking and possibly getting addicted to opioids, we may have an option for reducing and eliminating the body’s response to pain.
(Reported Discover, March 2019)
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