Episode 6 - Fibromyalgia Pain Science Education: what do toddlers, a magic trick, and fibro pain have in common?
This episode starts the pain education series. In this episode, I am talking about the foundation of pain science. Most of us think of pain as directly linked to body damage or tissue injury. I will explain how pain does not necessarily mean damage. Anticipation of pain, stress, emotions, memories, and many other triggers can trigger the sensation of pain. This is an important concept that must be understood if you want to find a solution for pain improvement.
You can see the full transcript: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1890983/9751127-fibromyalgia-pain-science-education-what-do-toddlers-a-magic-trick-and-fibro-pain-have-in-common
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0:00
Welcome back to the mind you fibro podcast episode number six. In the next few episodes, we're going to take a deep dive into Fibromyalgia origin, the brain pain processing problem, the biology and psychology of pain in how you can retrain your aura protective pain system and improve your symptoms. Today, you will learn that pain does not mean your body is damaged. How your thoughts emotions, stress, and experiences affect your pain. I love teaching neuroscience, it will make it easier for you to understand the pain sience. I will give you many examples and illustrations, so you can remember the information in apply to your life.
0:42
Before we begin today, I want to tell you a story. So my father was a very good storyteller, he will have a story about anything if something important comes up in our lives. He will have an example or a joke and anecdote or some type of life experience that he experienced in the past. So one year when I was a little, he was talking about hypnosis, and how he was in vacation. In a tentative show. With the hypnotist, he described several magic tricks and hypnotic tricks he was entertaining show, but one of the experiences that he described that I'm really remembering now, many, many years later, is a trick with a candle in a needle. So this person was from the audience and the entertainer was holding a flame and a needle in he would heat up the needle over a flame. And then he will touch the person and when the person was touched, they actually the needle was swapped, it was a cold needle that was swapped right before the touching. And the person experienced the pain in the sensation of the burning needle. So he was not touched by the actual hot needle he was touched by a cold needle but his nervous system his brain, processed that anticipated pain and discomfort and experience the pain as you should have should the needle was hot. So my dad actually met the man from the audience, he was either sitting next to him or some type of location close by. And he talked to the guy and he said he experienced this pain. And he thought he was burned. He thought his his skin will blister. And of course it did not. But the pain experience was very real. There was another story that I heard during one of my classes on pain reprocessing therapy about a guy a construction worker who was going through a construction site and he got impaled with a metal rod. It went through his shoe and he was rushed to hospital he was an agonizing pain. He was given medication for pain can he arrived to er, but when they removed the shoe in the saw the damage the actual the rod, when between his toes in did not even touch or cause any tissue damage. There was no there was no injury but yet the person perceived that injury as a real thing and he acted and felt that pain if it was actually damaging his body his foot.
3:28
So that brings us to an interesting concept of our brain, our brain processes pain, regardless if the pain is real or if the pain is anticipated. So what is pain? The International Association for the Study of pain defines pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with or resembling the actual or potential tissue damage. I want to emphasize a couple things. It is unpleasant, sensory, meaning sensation, or emotional experience associated with or resembling so look like an actual or potential tissue damage. Now most of us think that amount of pain experience is related directly to the degree of bodily damage or injury. The more injury or tissue damage, the higher the pain level, but 30 finishing the painting also originate from the potential or anticipated origin. It is also a personal, unique emotional experience. The emotions related to pain are processed by the brain. As the pain itself how one can feel or perceive pain requires two elements. First is a local component, a trigger that activates a pain receptor. It can be an injury as a sensation in the actual potential, a local marker that sends a signal to the brain. Second is the brain's perception of this pain, or how the brain processes this pain signal. When the brain receives this local pain signal, you can control the pain experience, you can turn the volume up of pain, or down. Our thoughts are often automatic, pre wired by our brain in often are not necessarily obvious to our consciousness. Yet, they have profound impact on both of our short term or immediate as well as long term adjustment to pain. The research about the pain control started in 1960s. It's called the gate control theory of pain. The pain signal is sent from the local area via the spinal cord nerves to the brain, the brain, as it receives the pain signal can reduce or increase the signals increase or reduce your pain. Think of an imaginary gate between the brain and the spinal cord. The brain controls the entrance in able to adjust the flow, some signals will always pass through, so you will always have some type of pain. If the pain pain originated in the local area. But the brain can widen the passage or make it narrower, allowing more or less pain signals to pass through.
6:25
The pain gate control center is located in the brains area that is also responsible for processing thoughts and emotions. So that thoughts emotions in pain are processed in the same area of the brain. The brain manages the experience of pain, the severity, as well as coping mechanisms using the thoughts and emotions. The brain analyzes the actual sensation in the context of your thoughts, feelings, anticipation of pain, expectations of the severity of pain, stress your memories, and your past pain experiences. The gate control of the pain explains that our brain has a degree of conscious control of the pain. The thoughts and emotions can either open the pain gate and lead more pain in or close the gate reducing the pain amount. emotional impact control can be learned in practice, leading to improved pain experience.
7:21
To illustrate this concept of the brain processing pain based on the anticipation, stress memories and past experience. Think of the toddlers who are getting vaccination shots. Now, if you're three or four years old, you had some vaccines in the past and you remember coming to a doctor to get them. If you if you have multiple toddlers, they will all experience the shots in a different way. Now the shot itself is pretty a similar experience to most people, but how they receive the shot depends on how the harder brain processes is experience. Now some toddlers will go into pediatricians office and they'll be okay to specific a mom slap in getting a sucker the end. Some will be hysterical just seeing the door of the petitioners office because it'll trigger the memories of past shots. Some of them will be in tears for hours. After this experience, they will remember it in will ruminate and think about showing you the bubble in the in the bandaid summit will need for people to hold them down so they don't jerk and break the needle. As you can tell, every child who gets the shot has experienced of this pain differently because of the processing of this pain based on anticipation of pain based on the past memories, their coping skills, how they can be comforted or not what they need to have a comfort about this pain. So just like toddlers will all have different pain experiences, the process pain based on your past memories, your present coping skills, as well as your wired nervous system. We're going to discuss all those concepts in the future episodes.
9:14
So let's summarize. The pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with or resembling of actual or potential tissue damage. You may have pain, even if there is no tissue damage, but only a thought or potential tissue damage. Your emotions and thoughts control the level of pain and emotional and pain control are located in the same area of your brain. Emotional thought control can be learned in practice, leading to improve the pain experience. Fibromyalgia pain can increase or decrease based on your anticipation of pain. Your prior experience with pain your thoughts your emotions, your memories, the stress level you're experiencing. So learning how to control your emotions and thoughts will improve your pain experience. In the next two episodes, we'll go deeper into the brain processing problem, and how you can learn how to rewire this problem we're going to talk about somatic tracking is one of the techniques used to improve pain processing, as well as relaxation techniques that are known to improve pain and improve your quality of life. Until next week, this is Dr. Olga Pinkston. And don't forget to mind your fibro!