New Pain Research!!!New Pain signal research changes the way we have thought about pain and how to help stop it!
Pain & Plasticity - Proving out the importance and physicality of Chapter 2 in my book. You can actually change how you see pain and how your brain reacts to it, physically. According to 2 doctors, who represent a conglomerate of doctors in Australia, understanding that most "pain" reactions don't actually cause pain but are reacting to danger and fear, not pain. Some sensors and neurons have actual pain signals going back and forth but from most major tissues they are danger signals which causes the brain to go into protection mode. Pain is actually a protective signal to draw attention to an area in danger. However, the longer we are in pain and feel actual pain, the better our bodies and mind get at producing it. Add to this the Amygdala's fear and pain memories replacing our worst pain onto our current, less painful experience and you can see how we have trained our brain to send pain signals in response to danger. This is from some recent findings in brain and pain studies. These signals are actual pain but can be changed back to "safety" signals with training. These doctors have narrowed it down to a neg vs pos compendium (chapter 2 in my book) and called it "DIM vs SIM, (Danger in me and Safety in me.)" The brain, they say, reacts to danger with pain signals and to safety with the release of serotonin and other soothing chemicals to the affected areas from the brain. They have developed a whole pain clinic based on teaching patients to re-train their brain by learning new responses to bad situations and learning to identify the bad ones they think, and it gets pretty heavy. They claim a lot of success although it pretty much just started, the research data is that new. In my book, "Journey through Pain - Chapter 2, Negative vs Positive," I do the same thing exactly. Learn to identify the negatives first and I start with the outright, easy ones and then slowly bring the patient through the deeper and more subtle ones. Eventually I end it with the subliminal ones, especially on TV that actually use positives to hide a negative message and brainwash us with them. This truthfully saved my life and was the beginning of a whole new way of thinking for me, especially being a cynic from Boston! The tricky part, the part that requires a lot of creative thinking is learning to rephrase them into real, truthful, actual positive thoughts and suggestions. It's so cool to see there's actually science to explain why this worked so well. Another way of looking at this is t imagine the brain is like the plumbing in your shower. You turn the faucet on and the water slowly starts to come out and hot or cold or in between, it feels painful when it hits your dry body. This is what happens when you first start to spot negatives and change them into positives. But as you turn the faucet higher, the water starts to cover your body and it acclimates to the temperature and the drops hitiing you and it feels good, better anyways. This allows you to walk in fully and flood yourself with the spray of the warm soothing water, only on this case, as you are surrounded with a positive outlook and thoughts, the shower head breaks off and the water comes flooding out and your whole being, your whole life is so filled with positives, the negatives just can't affect anything. Then, like me, you look back and realize there's been hardly any bad anymore, like, I haven't had any sickness except for my bone disease in 10 years! None! Not even a common cold! I was diagnosed with prostate cancer (from 2 biopsies w/ a PSA of 23) Kidney problems and Diabetes II in September of 09 and in one year, and with no treatments, surgeries or even diet changes (because I had moved in between and was in the process of changing doctors and stuff, - they just went away! Gone! This is now my newest addendum to the "Falling-in" part of the Pain Cycle Materials in the section called "Surrender" the first step in Swinging the Curve. It is a science answer and explanation to what used to be simply psychology. This pain psychology is always very tough for patients to get behind because anything that implies psychology implies what we all fear the most - "It's all in your head." The 2 doctors were very adamant in saying it is NOT in your head and the pain feelings very real. Both doctors were actual pain sufferers, so they seemed very empathetic of the pain gauntlet experience. Below I am putting a couple of interesting factoids from them. But take comfort as I am, that now, what was once my crazy theory based on a serendipitous outlook is now very real and concrete. This explains, somewhat, the reason things got so much better for me and how I was ready for Swinging the Curve, Surrender, Forgiveness and Belief. Plasticity - What in my thoughts, my beliefs, my behaviors, my relationships, in my entire existence - implies threat? = reduce " " ...safety? = increase. "Joint, muscle and nerve pain are danger signal sensors only, not pain signals. Pain is a protective device from the brain. Tons of neurons and sensors react very quickly to evaluate the danger and send the proper pain signal to the area affected. More danger, more pain. What you think, what you believe, what you're taught, How you feel, how you behave - the quality of your life improves. Anything that changes your brain's evaluation of danger will change your pain." - Prof. Lorimer Moseley, The Body in Mind Research Team - Immune offset/balancing behaviors;
HELLO!What I have to say in this article will undoubtedly make a lot of people angry and they may say that I have turned on them and that I no longer believe their pain is real. Nothing will be further from the truth.
I am in so much pain all the time and find it so painful to do any task, including breathe, that there could be no way I wouldn't believe anyone who claims to be in chronic pain. I myself, went through the gauntlet and felt the power of the medical system as it turned on me and robbed me of everything, all because they didn't believe me. I would be the last person on Earth to tell someone they were lying about being in pain. That said... I have met hundreds of people in pain and hundreds more, doctors and scientists who treat pain diseases and I can say, after 10 years of being involved in the pain realm, that over 90% of those in pain are not ready, or willing, to take the necessary steps to find peace and put pain in the background of their lives. I do not mean this in a negative way. It is more a fact of life. I myself was not ready when I was faced with the steps necessary to tame the pain. It turns out that 90% of the materials from the pain classes was very important to my understanding of pain and how to live with it. I was actually taking more notes from my re-reading of these papers and then realized I had already taken notes from the class and from the instructor, the head of the psychiatry department at MassGeneral hospital! Ha! Imagine this: I'm being taught pain education by a major heavyweight doctor in one of the best hospitals in the world, and yet I was not paying attention! Wow! So you can see, I would never hold it against anyone who didn't "hear" me when I presented the materials to them. I fully understand. I hope that they would at least listen, maybe take notes, and sometime later when they are "ready" they will pull out this material and give it a real shot! After my "epiphany" in 2005 I took out the papers I had saved from the pain classes I took in 2004 and re-read them only to realize I had completely missed the information when I first read them. This is one of the ways I knew that something major had happened to me that day in April, 2005. When I say I could see clearly all the steps of the Pain Cycle laid out in front of me, I wasn't making this up. My mind was now open to learning and to reaching the knowledge of the Pain Cycle Materials, another lesson I was yet to learn. I had the epiphany and the new found knowledge, but I hadn't taken the steps yet. hadn't put the information into practical experience. Whenever I present, or attempt to teach the Pain Cycle Materials, 90% of the time I am greeted with the same looks, the same, I guess the word would be "pacified response," meaning that the person, for some reason, was saying "yes" but not meaning they would do any work or they would do any research or even really listen to what I would offer them. Being a minor em-path it's easy for me to pick up on their "vibe" and to know immediately that I was wasting my time. I have come to realize now that it is not a waste of time and the information I give them would still be heard on a more minor level. I, myself was like this in my pain classes in 2004, so I get it, but God forbid I would bring this up. It's like I might as be calling them a fake. What I really want to say, and I can say it here because I'm not going to alienate someone to their face is, I don't know what it means or why the focus isn't ready yet for this learning. It may be that the person is thinking I'm the fake! Or that thee may be work involved and they don't feel up[ to it. Maybe it's like my pain counselor said showed up on the tests I took, that there is a filter in the brain of which we take in information and begin the physical process, but due to being in constant pain this filter is a confused mass and the information going through the brain is being received wrong, or jambled and it causes different intake problems. You can tell I tend to believe this one. I believe that once a person is ready, they will be more up to receiving this educational material and ready to do the work involved to getting there. What I'm really hoping, is that buy hearing me say this, and once you get over the anger and guilt you are feeling because it sounds like I'm 'daring" you to do it, that you will let down your guard for a moment and try to hear and receive this information. Remember, there are 2 sectors of chronic pain, the primary, or physical injury, trauma and hurting. There is also the secondary. This is what happens to people who are in pain chronically or constantly. After a few months and especially after a year, the brain has accommodated the effects of pain by actually creating filters and space for these effects. Also, the Amygdala throws out memories of your most intense painful experience and "marries" your current pain with these memories. This is also part of the secondary pain. Again, this will make people angry because it touches on the psychological, a huge no-no in the pain realm. Or maybe, just me telling you this stuff will be enough and you will begin NOW! If you're not ready yet, at least save it so it will be there when you reach that point I did, where you ready to understand, you are stuck with this pain injury or disease and you just want to change your life around so you can be your true self again. Maybe just skim through the materials and read something that you can start now. You should at least read the beginning material to understand the concept of the Pain Cycle and get an overview of what you will be studying and practicing. I have found that most people take a year or so to "get it." Also, I am here, ready to answer your questions or help in any way I can. Feel free to contact me anytime. Good Luck and I really hope you are successful in your journey through pain. Tame that monster! Having troublewith people not believing
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