Retrain your brain to release chronic pain (EP20)

<p>Today’s <strong>Brain Booster</strong> is: <strong>Retrain your brain to release chronic pain.</strong></p><p>Since starting my podcast I’ve received a lot of questions about how to manage chronic pain, including back, neck and shoulder pain, migraines, fibromyalgia and RSI (repetitive strain injury).</p><p>This is not surprising because chronic pain is one of the biggest public health challenges globally. Worldwide, 1 in 5 adults live with chronic pain. In Australia, 5.5 million adults have chronic pain, and in the US, it’s 50 million people.</p><p>That’s a lot of people in a lot of pain.</p><p>But do not fear, a solution is here! That’s what today’s podcast episode is about. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that nothing can be done for your chronic pain. When a health professional says ‘there’s nothing we can do’, what they mean is, there’s nothing THEY can do. But there’s plenty YOU can do.</p><p>If you’ve had constant or intermittent pain for over three months, it’s highly likely you have what’s known as <strong>neuroplastic pain</strong>. This is pain generated by the brain in the absence of physical damage to any of your muscles, tissues or organs. What’s going on?</p><p>In some cases, pain can become a habit. For example, you injured your back while moving furniture. You had physiotherapy for a month, and the injury has now healed. However, your brain got used to generating pain whenever you moved a certain way, and the circuit now keeps firing, even though your muscles have recovered. It’s like something in your brain is stuck on repeat. Another term for this is <strong>learned pain</strong>. The good news is that what is learned can be unlearned.</p><p>In other cases, chronic pain is a manifestation of severe stress or anxiety — even if there was NO triggering injury. Pain can also result from suppressed emotions like anger, rage, resentment, or grief. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our feelings, they will be expressed in our body — in many cases as chronic or relapsing pain.</p><p>* * * * * </p><p>Today’s <strong>Health Headline </strong>is: <strong>The purpose of pain is protection.</strong></p><p>The purpose of pain is to alert us to danger — be that physical, psychological, or emotional danger.</p><p>Have you ever developed a headache when you’ve been snowed under at work? Or neck pain when you’ve felt pressured to meet a deadline? That’s <strong>neuroplastic pain</strong> arising from the threat of failure. No one suddenly hit you o