Dr. Howard Schubiner Explains: How to Unlearn Your Pain

Dr. Howard Schubiner just might be the most experienced and knowledgable physician on the planet, when it comes to the research and treatment of neuroplastic pain and symptoms. We're honoured to have him join us! 

Howard sits down with Tanner to teach and share about his new book, Unlearn Your Pain.

You'll hear about:
• Howard's path into mind-body medicine and why this work challenges the status quo 
• What his new, comprehensive Unlearn Your Pain book provides readers, including neuroscience, an exploration of specific conditions (not just pain!), plus evidence-based treatment 
• Predictive processing - how the brain creates our experiences (sometimes incorrectly) in an effort to help us
• The role of belief and confidence in healing, and how that "click" can happen
• Key signs that suggest neuroplastic symptoms, after medical causes are ruled out 
• Anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and depression as neuroplastic conditions - and why treatment principles overlap 

Preorder Dr. Schubiner's latest book here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Unlearn-Your-Pain-Recovering-Depression/dp/0593994361/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cvbjtQFOl7jwFIyUyF8ou3RirwMcT96jsAsw_R5VaLiXB3kBjxW-9mQrP-S8MJ_TKT-rOizNpTTz5VKiugKM0V-f51H5Wma4ErRK8-ZG5Tzsuhm0FxOHzICS2MjqS0nOjVMVKo7qqI4nHD2G3SZSJJYgQ_qQLOWAmVA09avMK5uYWOHjTqEu6oRqBg8FQrw0ebSNUqK2n1va56oKORtEF-ipNOMEXWHbRqvpDs2eYQkCwau7_M1JV9ilh_UrMmin_2uNd-Ch1sjmJKTaYrfn-DM1q-77ct4f-yz8nSdX6nQ.2FPlIMtVoNa9e3l1ZkGRPHbpbCWn3nqu9_9213ryK20&dib_tag=se&keywords=unlearn+your+pain+by+howard+schubiner&qid=1777923581&sr=8-1

Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson are therapists who treat neuroplastic pain and mind-body symptoms. They are also married!

In his 20s, Tanner overcame chronic pain and a fibromyalgia diagnosis by learning his symptoms were neuroplastic, not structural. Post-healing, Tanner and Anne have dedicated their lives to developing effective treatment and education for neuroplastic pain and symptoms.

Listen and learn how to assess your own chronic pain and symptoms, gain tools to retrain the brain and nervous system, and make changes in your life and health!

The Mind-Body Couple podcast is owned by Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc. This podcast is produced by Alex Klassen, one of the wonderful therapists at our agency in Calgary, Alberta. https://www.painpsychotherapy.ca/

Tanner, Anne, and Alex also run the MBody Community, an in-depth online course that provides a step-by-step process for assessing, treating, and resolving mind-body pain and symptoms. https://www.mbodycommunity.com

Check out Tanner's YouTube channel for more free education and practices: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Fl6WaFHnh4ponuexaMbFQ

And follow us for daily education posts on Instagram: @painpsychotherapy

Disclaimer: The information provided on this podcast is for general in...

Transcript

Welcome And How To Get Help

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Mind Body Couple podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

I'm Tandra Merton.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

And I'm Ann Hampson.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

This podcast is dedicated to helping you unlearn chronic pain and symptoms.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

If you need support with your healing, you can book in for a consultation with one of our therapists at painpsychotherapy.ca.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Or purchase our online course at embodycommunity.com to access in-depth education, somatic practices, recovery tools, and an interactive community focused on healing. Links in the description of each episode.

Howard’s Path Into Mind Body Medicine

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I have a very special guest, Dr. Howard Schubener. So thanks for being on, Dr. Schubner. Thank you. It's a pleasure, Tanner. And please call me Howard. Howard. Okay. And I and I saw you last actually at the ATNS conference. And, you know, I'm always in awe when I see you speaking and sharing your wisdom there. Now, many of our listeners are probably very familiar with your work. So I thought it could be really interesting for us all to know how did you wind up on this particular career path? And what got you hooked on this area of medicine and research?

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Yeah, yeah. Great question. In the book, I talk about, at the end of the book, I talk about this quote from Kierkegaard where he says, you can only live your life forward, but you can only understand it backwards. And when I look back at my life, there were so many things that seem to have led up to this, almost as if they were fate or destiny for me to do this work. I don't necessarily believe in fate or destiny, but I believe in opportunities. And what happened to me is back in college days when I was figuring out I might want to be a doctor, I got involved in uh free clinics and I saw how people who didn't have insurance, poor people, they were kind of left out of medicine. And medicine was there was a lot of these high-priced, high-tech stuff that was happening that was great, but a lot of medicine wasn't addressing kind of common problems that everyday people had. And that kind of stuck with me. And then I went through my career and I ended up joining a medical school faculty and uh learning how to do research and teach and speak and see patients and do counseling and all sorts of skills that I gathered along the way. And then in 2000, the end of 2002, when I read uh one of Dr. Sarno's books, The Mind Body Prescription, and I called him up and went to work with him for a while to see what he was doing. My brain was primed on two levels. One level to question, kind of question authority, question the status quo. Maybe medicine has a blind spot, maybe it's wrong in some areas. I was open to that. And at the same time, I had developed a lot of skills that served me well when I started doing this work, and I got hooked by it because I started trying it out when I came back to my hospital, and um it worked. I saw people getting better or get better before, and it was miraculous. And it wasn't anything I had specifically done, it was some ideas that were really, really powerful and really made sense and challenged the status quo. So that's kind of how I got hooked, and that led to a tremendous outpouring from me in reading and eventually research and practice and connecting to people around the country and around the world.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yeah. When you went back and practiced them in that story, you realized, oh, how powerful these things are and how much change they can actually create. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

And it boils down to neuroscience. It boils down to medical science and neuroscience and psychological science. And you put all those together, then you have a really powerful recipe for helping people with some of the most vexing conditions that modern medicine has not had answers for. Chronic pain, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue syndromes.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah.

unknown 4:37

Yeah.

New Book Scope And Controversial Topics

SPEAKER_01 4:38

And I think it's it's incredibly powerful work. And, you know, personally, I got so much out of your workbook that the Unlearn Your Pain workbook that was published 2010. Is that right? I recovered from from widespread chronic pain in I think maybe 2015. And I read some of Dr. Sarno's books, but I really liked the way you lied out these ideas in the book. And the workbook was super helpful just to do the exercises and practices, and and it had amazing results. And I'm always um sharing that book with with all my clients that I work with. Um, and I know now you have a new book, a novel-sized version of Unlearn Your Pain that's coming out. And what does this new format and writing offer the readers?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Well, uh it's big. It's like my OPS. Yeah, my legacy project. It's got over 800 medical references. Uh, I really tried to go into depth for the general public, but into depth on the neuroscience of how the brain works and the neuroscience of pain, anxiety, depression, and fatigue. Um, how our brains literally create what we experience. There's a ton of that in there. And then I have a whole sections on the different conditions, the medical science of what we know about back pain and how we know that uh most people with back pain do have a neuroplastic condition, an irritable bowel, and fibromyalgia, and pelvic pain. And I go into some of the more less widely known areas of anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and then things like uh long COVID, uh chronic fatigue syndrome, POTS, mast cell activation syndrome, there's a whole host of these other disorders that I kind of take on and try to really help uh you know get into the nitty-gritty of what's going on when we put together the medical science, the neuroscience, and the psychological science. And then there's a whole treatment section, of course. And I took on the controversial area of why women have higher rates of pain and anxiety, depression, and fatigue than do men. And that's a difficult and thorny topic because uh women have been uh hurt and blamed in society. They've been gaslit in a patriarchal society, including in medicine. Uh and they haven't been believed and haven't been, they've been dismissed. And this book and this work is about seeing people in their wholeness, not blaming them or not saying, and not saying it's all in their head, but seeing that their life experience is really important. Traumas, emotional, physical, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, online bullying, all these things are higher in women than men. And so it's really not surprising that women have higher rates of these conditions, as do other vulnerable populations, rural people, poor people, and then less educated people, people of color, um, other minorities, uh, sexual minorities, et cetera. So it's I really tried to be as comprehensive as I could.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

You did. Well, I uh I was sent a PDF of the book before this, and I and I can confirm to the listeners it's it's big and it's very comprehensive. And I and I loved how you spoke to all sorts of conditions besides just the typical pain that people think about, like back or neck, yeah, and huge treatment section. And yeah, you do speak and are write very well about some of these more controversial topics that that people shy away from. And for the listeners, the book is currently on pre-sale. Is that correct? Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Yeah, it comes out on May 26, 2026.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Okay, well, I will put for everyone listening, I'll put the link to pre-order the book in the description of this episode. Thanks, Danner. I got, you know, uh a PDF of the book before this interview, and I got a bit hooked this weekend, so I spent a few hours kind of reading it through. And and you're right, it's it's incredibly comprehensive. I loved how it just broke down the different conditions besides just the the typical pain uh conditions that are typically talked about. And I think there's so much in what you just said there to kind of start

Predictive Processing And Why Pain Feels Real

SPEAKER_01 9:21

at the beginning. I know you're really explaining in detail in the book how neuroplasticity in the brain can trigger very real chronic pain, chronic fatigue, other chronic symptoms. Can you explain for the listeners how this process kind of occurs?

SPEAKER_03 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

What's what really blew my mind a few years ago, because I've been doing this work for a while, but then when I really learned about the neuroscience of predictive processing, that made all the difference in the world. Because predictive processing means that our brains literally create what we experience, which sounds like a woo-woo new age concept. Our brains create what we see. Images of what we see are generated in our brain in the visual cortex. Light in our eyes, but it has to be transformed into signals. But those signals are modified by our memory of what things look like, our memory of our experiences in the past. And so if someone sees a crime being committed and they go to the police station, they're likely to pick out the wrong person because of what they saw isn't exactly what they saw, which seems weird. But your brain creates different two people seeing the same things will see different things. Their brains are trying to process tons of information and take shortcuts because our brains are trying to protect us. So every person you walk down the street, your brain is deciding friend or foe, friend or foe, right? Safety or danger. So our brains are constantly trying to predict ahead of time what's going to be dangerous to us. And it's what that means is all of our past experiences go into that. Pain occurs in the brain. When you touch a hot stove, it's not your finger causing pain, which again is weird. It the finger sends signals to the brain, but you have an injury and have no pain. Just that fact. If you can have an injury, and everyone knows that can happen, yeah. No pain, that means the brain is controlling pain. And then you can have pain in the absence of injury. So our brain is a warning detection system. It's looking out for danger all the time. Is it a snake or a rope? It's looking out for danger. And if it if we if we get injured, the brain turns on pain, so it knows we're in danger and we should take action. If we have emotional injury, the brain can also turn on pain or these other any other sensations as a warning sign. And that's how the brain works. It's not a certain part of the brain, it's the networks, networks within the brain, the neuroscience is called the salience network, which means what's important. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

So I don't know, does that make sense? No, it makes it makes a lot of sense. And you know, one thing that we often talk about with our clients are these ideas of like optical illusions. Yeah. Um, like you see these, right? Where you think one shade of a square is different than another shade of a square, but when you actually line them up, they're the exact same.

unknown 12:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

It's kind of what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

In the sense of basically when inputs come up from the body, it's not a direct input-output. The input comes up from the body to the brain, it's combined with basically a bunch of other data. Correct. And that's like, as you said, like memory, emotional state, um, whether something is safe or dangerous, whether your body's safe or dangerous, but it just gets combined with all this information. And then your brain makes decisions. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

The main reason the brain will make one decision is most likely what it did last time. So if so the brain tends to repeat, that's how pain, anxiety, depression, fatigue can get stuck in a loop. That's why the brain continues to produce them because that's what it's predicting. Every time you bend over, if you're if you had back pain last time, your brain is going to predict back pain this time, unless it gets new and corrective information. And so once that loop forms, and that loop can form very quickly, because if you if you tweak your back one time and last time you tweaked your back, you were in bed for three weeks, that tweak of your back this time is going to trigger that danger signal pretty strongly. And your brain's going to go, whoa, wait a minute. If you get a cold, and the last time you got a cold, you were in bed for a whole week, you know, out of it, fatigued and couldn't get out of bed. You get a cold this next time, and the brain may trigger a pretty strong reaction of fatigue because that's what it did last time. It's just trying to kind of help us and protect us from what it perceives as danger.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

So this is this is essentially how pain or symptoms can be learned. And I loved what you said there, where I think a lot of people in this space, and a lot of people I work with think about it like this of well, I only had the one or two experiences of back pain. Like, how was that learned so quickly? Yeah, but it really can be learned quite fast.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Hey, yeah, immediately. Yeah. Immediately, because the brain is, and that's why it can be unlearned very quickly, also. Okay. Yeah. Because the brain, these are neural circuits, they're not hardwired things. No, it's not like some pathway that uh is uh you know hardwired into like a computer or motherboard. It's it's like a software, it's a neural circuit, it can be formed and unformed. And the brain changes quickly. I mean, if you if you there's a study I talk about in the book where if they blindfold people and they give them these tasks on their skin of uh two-point discrimination, so they're trying to figure out what they feel on their skin with while being blindfolded. Same time, they're monitoring their brain function. What they find within 40 minutes or so, the parts of the brain that are used for vision start to get used for tactile uh input within half an hour, what to an hour? Wow. The brain is changing that quickly. It's saying, Oh, we're not getting any input from the eyes. Let's use this part of the brain to help with this other task. I mean, that is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

That is amazing. And it I think it kind of speaks to the results of the boulder back pain study that was done on pain reprocessing therapy. Because I remember when that study came out and and Alan Gordon's book came out. There was a lot of people, I remember at the time when I would get you know new reach outs of people kind of interested in this, but it was almost like a disbelief thing of like how could someone heal that quickly, essentially, right from years upon years of pain. But it but that's the thing, is it it can be reversed very quickly as well for some reason.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Because these are learned neural circuits and they can be unlearned. The brain responds to predictive uh you know changes, it's called prediction error. It sees, oh, that's an error. Oh, I'll change the correction, you know, I'll change the output. It's it's an amazing process because we know that it can happen quickly. Uh and we know the brain needs certainty. This is a really important part of this work. Part of the reason people don't get better sometimes is they don't believe that they can. And it's and this is what I was saying, friend or foe, when you're walking down the street, is that person friend or foe? The brain works in in safety or danger. Yeah. So when you change your belief that that the pain is not due, or the anxiety is not due to some damaged body or damaged brain, or the fatigue is not due to damaged mitochondria or uh blood clots or or whatever people have been told. When you change that belief to, oh, these are learned neural circuits in my brain that can unlearn, that can unlearn quickly, that is a huge way of shifting these neural circuits. And that's why pain reprocessing therapy can work so quickly. It's simple neuroscience.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's why people, you know, there's those stories of people getting better. They just had this like almost epic moments of like full belief right off the bat.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Exactly. At some point, and the uh, you know, I in the book I call it a click moment. Yeah. Where something clicks, and you had a moment where there's a guy who was having severe sciatic pain, and his MRI showed a bulging disc in the same area, so it looked structural, and the pain never varied, it never moved around, so it seemed structural, not neuroplastic, and he but it the injections didn't work, and the pain meds didn't work, and this guy's suffering, it's going year after year. And then one day, and he was learning this work, but he couldn't believe it because it didn't click, it didn't fit. His the evidence wasn't there for him. And then one day he was realized that when he walked up the steps, yeah, he was having a small amount of pain. But if he walked up his steps carrying a teacup, he had a huge amount of pain. And then he's like, What's with the teacup? Yeah, so he's thinking, Well, what am I doing with the teacup? The teacup's not affecting my back, I'm holding it in my arm. But he said, I'm having this thought, don't spill the tea. And he said, Well, that thought's coming from my brain, and my brain is creating tension of not spilling the tea, and that tension is causing pain more pain in my leg. And he went, click. And that was his moment.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Little cup of tea, that was his moment, and people have these all the time. And then then he had the confidence, then he had the belief, and then he got better. And within a couple months, he was, you know, walking 20,000 steps and traveling to Europe and carrying suitcases, things he could never have done before, because he changed the mindset, he changed the belief, he changed the confidence, and that changed the neural circuits in his brain.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah. Well, it it speaks to this idea of people starting to self-assess and look for signs that their symptoms are neuroplastic.

Fast Change And The Role Of Belief

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

And, you know, let's imagine someone listening is brand new to this idea of brain-based um treating treating chronic symptoms with a brain-based approach. Right. What would be your top signs you would really want them to look out for that could suggest their symptoms are neuroplastic?

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Yeah, great question. Well, the first thing is everyone's gonna get gonna get medical evaluations and make sure they don't have a significant structural uh problem. So that has to be done first. Okay. And but when you do that, either the doctor is saying, I don't know what the cause of your symptoms is, all the tests are normal, that's one option, then it's gonna be neuroplastic. Because if it's not structural, what else could it be? I mean, just that is pretty powerful. Or they'll say you have this condition, but this condition is one of the conditions that are highly likely to be neuroplastic: fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic neck or back pain, um, migraine headaches, tension headaches, chronic pelvic pain, pedundal neuralgia, interstitial cystitis. Uh the list goes on, tinnitus, vertigo syndromes, um, uh not to mention anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, etc. So that in and of itself is a big clue. A really big clue. But beyond that, if you want to go a step farther, which we I believe you should, to get to your question, what are the signs that rule in a neuroplastic condition? One is, well, one is that you've had other neuroplastic conditions in your life. You've had stress and trauma in your life. The stress and trauma is related to it. So you had symptoms that were at the onset of some of the stressful life events. You're putting those links together. Those can be powerful evidence as well when you really see that pattern. So functional means it's in a wide area of the body. It came on without any precipitating ill injury. And again, the the uh tests are normal. You're not finding any structural disease to account for it. Um, the pain is spreading over time, uh, or or the or the symptoms are very widespread. They're very severe. With you have minor things that are minor on kind of uh examination or medical visits, but the symptoms are very severe, those are highly likely to be functional. And then it's inconsistent. So it's moves, it turns on or off, it moves to different places in the body. I'm sure you experienced that when you were, you know, when you were suffering. Yes, absolutely. Because I mean, if you break your elbow, it doesn't start hurting in the other elbow. It's that inconsistency, variability during the day, waking people up in the middle of the night, uh, bad in the morning, better in the afternoon, all these variability things that point to the neural circuits ramping up and ramping down. And then these triggers, people who are triggered by pain or other symptoms because of going to the grocery store or visiting a relative, or hot or cold, or sun, or wind, or sound, or the weather, all these kinds of things that turn out to be conditioned responses. So there's a whole list of these things that are that are you know in my book, and um and it's really powerful when people really look look at them closely and begin to see, oh my God, that just happened to me. There's the evidence.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah, it it I really appreciate sharing all this because I think you know, all those criteria you just talked about, you're right, like it it can bring on that click moment for people. And as you're talking, I was thinking to myself, I remember my pain started, I think it was on my my left shoulder, right to my fingertips. Yeah, but then you know, a few months later, the same thing happened on the right, right? Like and it's wild because when you don't understand this kind of brain-based education around neuroplastic symptoms, you don't understand like to look out for the signs. It's interesting is you know, even for myself, I came up with all sorts of reasons of how this could physically make sense on both sides. They weren't great reasons, they weren't great reasons, I'll say. But but you come up with all sorts of reasons, and people are really confused and they're getting more panicked. But I think just starting to see the signs can be so healing for people because they start to understand oh, like this this makes sense. Like this makes sense

The Teacup Click Moment Story

SPEAKER_01 25:33

to me of of why this is taking place and what's actually happening.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

What happens um, unfortunately, is that when you're stuck in a biomedical model, biomedical paradigm where all symptoms are due to some structural damage. By definition, that's just the way it is. People's doctors and their PTs and all of their practitioners, their alternative practitioners are all in that same camp, all in that same boat. And so they're coming up with more and more unusual reasons to explain why the pain is doing what it's doing, or why the anxiety is doing what it's doing, or why the fatigue is doing what it's doing. And you go to different and different doctors and you keep getting different answers. Yes, it's very confusing and very upsetting and can be demoralizing and depressing, obviously. You're not getting better, and you're seeing all you're hearing all these things that are supposedly wrong with you, and it sounds like you're horrible because one thing on top of another, on top of the medical diagnosis, the alternative medical diagnoses get piled up. And then are they really making sense? You know, I mean it's it's hard to it's hard to go against the grain. That's what I was talking about at the very first question you asked me. I learned to be skeptical of opinions. I learned to be skeptical of medical opinions, I learned to be skeptical of medical diagnoses, even. Yeah. You need to be skeptical and look at the evidence. And that's why this work is being discovered by more and more people. Because the, and that's what I write in my book, the medical evidence isn't supporting a biomedical model for the vast majority of the people who are suffering with chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and fatigue syndromes.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

It's not, but it starts to break through that. It is, it is, yeah. But it starts to, it's it starts to all come together and and make sense to people because I think you're right, so many people, myself included, when I have my pain, you hear 25 different opinions. Oh my god. And then you're I I remember just like shutting down because I was just like, This is too much. I have no idea which person is correct. And a lot of them were just contradicting each other. Um, yeah, and so it does come down to yeah, going against the typical medical advice people are given. And that's a that's a big leap for people to take. But yeah, when they take it, yeah, they can come to this this brain-based understanding. Um, I mean, I've so many times I feel, I mean, I I love my profession.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

I love being a doctor, I love our profession. Modern medicine has been really good at helping people in recent advances in technical advances in cancer treatment, stroke treatment, heart attack treatment, congestive heart failure treatment, diabetes treatment. There's been a lot of great advances, autoimmune disease treatments. Um, but it's maddening uh when we we see so many people who've been misled uh and um and you know really made worse

Signs Your Symptoms Are Neuroplastic

SPEAKER_02 28:53

by procedures, invasive procedures, and tons of medication that may not have been necessary.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna shift our focus for a second here because I want I want to give some time to this topic because I was I was reading it through in your new book, and I know you write about how anxiety and depression can be neuroplastic conditions. Yeah. And can you explain how they can be classified as neuroplastic conditions?

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, um, there are just like with back pain, you could have a tumor in your back, a cancer in your back causing pain. So that would be structural. Uh just with anxiety, you can have a hyperthyroid situation that needs medical treatment that can cause symptoms of anxiety. You can have heart arrhythmias that can cause symptoms of anxiety. Uh, with depression, you can have low thyroid or low testosterone levels or other conditions, medication side effects that can cause depression. So it's the same for all these conditions. The medical part, the biomedical part, needs to be ruled out. But once you do that, you're left with symptoms that are real, you know, real anxiety, real OCD, PTSD, real depression, you know, can't get out of bed, sad, you know, can't enjoy life. Those are real sensations. And because of predictive processing, all of those sensations are being generated in the brain. So that's a fact. So if these sensations are being generated in the brain, and we've ruled out a structural biomedical cause for them, then by definition they are neuroplastic because they're due to learn neural science. And the evidence is vast for this because we know if you go to a doctor with depression that you're likely to tell you you have low serotonin and you need a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, increase the serotonin in your brain. This is not true. I show that in my book. This is not medically correct. People with depression don't have abnormal neurotransmitters. Um, and medications for depression don't work any better than placebo medications for depression. Yeah. So that's pretty strong evidence that's neuroplastic. We've wrote out the structure. We know scientifically it's not a neurotransmitter problem, and we know that the medications are working by a placebo effect. The same is true for back injections. This is amazing. Wow. Back injections don't work better than placebo back injections. That's been shown. Yeah. That's evidence that these conditions are neuroplastic. They're being generated in the brain. Um, and we see them alternate. You know, we'll see people have a lot of pain, the pain goes down, and the anxiety goes up. Yeah. We see people with uh anxiety lifelong and then they get pain, or they have lifelong or long time standing pain, and then they get depression or anxiety. You know, I mean, the the doctors kind of want to make it structural, they want to make it, oh, you've got neuroinflammation in your brain, that's not true. You've got it's genetic, you know, that's not true. Genetics for depression, as with my migraine, can predispose to depression. Yeah. But these genes that are predisposing towards depression have to be turned on, and they get turned on by stress and trauma and emotional situations. The genes aren't the problem, it's the stress and emotional situations that are turning on the genes and they can be turned off. So it's not like a death sentence, it's not like getting Huntington's Korea, where you have those genes, you're going to get that disease. It's not that way. It's called epigenetic. Epigenetic means the genes are can be modified by the environment.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

I think for some listeners, this is probably brand new information. And I think so many people have that experience. I've worked with so many. I had this experience where, you know, the pain, the pain, the fatigue is treated, it goes away, people are back to fully living, and at some point they're hit with just immense anxiety or depression or OCD. And I love what you said there that the treatment is the same.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

That that we need to approach it the same way. And you know, I fell victim to to not buy into that, even though I had already fully recovered from pain. I think that's so it's so interesting how how we separate these things out. Right. Um, where I healed it felt miraculously from my pain. Yeah. And then yet I rushed to to doctors for SSRIs, SSNRIs to try and treat my anxiety, obsessive, um, obsessive thinking.

SPEAKER_03 33:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

And I remember this one I was meeting with a psychiatrist. This is probably a decade ago. And I was sitting there, and at the time, uh, I know you've talked about sleep before, but at the time I was so anxious about my sleep and obsessed about it. It's all I thought about all day. And at the time I had had a new baby that was three months premature. I moved into a house. I graduated my graduate degree. And I remember that she was a funny lady. She sat across from me and she was like, Do you think it's just safer for your brain to like obsess about sleep right now compared to all the other parts of your life that are in immensely stressful? And it it was like a clicking moment where I was just like, Oh, yeah, of course that's what's happening here. And and then at that point, I went and read your other book on learn anxiety and depression, which the first five chapters and the education there was very helpful. Um, so I appreciate that. But yeah, I think it's so interesting, right? That the treatment is the same.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah, because they're just different manifestations of a danger signal of a smoke alarm in the brain. And you know, it's funny, we don't know why the brain would choose one symptom or another. It's speculative. Yeah. Reasons we could have, but one of the reasons is that the brain's trying to get your attention. A smoke alarm has to be loud. So what's going to get your attention? If in the second time, you know, when you're uh when your baby was born and new house and all that, if your brain had given you pain, you probably wouldn't have been that concerned about it. I went to bed. I went to bed, yeah, that's true. So your brain gave you something completely different and in a way scarier to get your attention, and it succeeded. But it's just we the brain, I wish the brain would speak English and just tell it, tell us what it's trying to say.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah. Well, I I I appreciate you know the knowledge Howard, you've shared today on on chronic pain, chronic symptoms, but but also anxiety, depression, and and and how they're very real symptoms can be produced in the brain and and can be effectively treated using this brain-based approach. And uh I'm sure all the listeners are very excited for your for your book to come out soon. And, you know, just a little conclusion question here. Um many of our listeners have either fully recovered their chronic symptoms or are still in the process of understanding their symptoms and working on recovery. What would be a final message about neuroplastic symptoms you would want to give the audience?

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think the sometimes going back to the basics is the best thing. You know, making sure that you're you're convinced that medical stuff has been ruled out. And you're convinced of that. And you've looked for your click moments and you've made your evidence list and you go over it and you really find that that you can change your belief. Yeah. It's just so often that people are kind of, they say, Oh, yeah, I know it's neuroplastic, but they're not really buying into it. Yeah. They're just kind of waffling and wavering and still worried about all these other things. See if you can get that out of the way. See if you can give your brain certainty. See if you can give your brain compassion and caring and love. See if you can give yourself compassion and caring and love for what you're going through. And see if you can then begin to find something else, something else that will give you something meaningful and valuable and fun and enjoyable in your life that you can focus

How The Biomedical Model Can Mislead

SPEAKER_02 37:44

on instead of as you were focusing on why you're not sleeping. Yeah. It's not a good focus.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

It's not a good focus, yeah. Well, that's wonderful advice. I I really appreciate that. And I I appreciate you spending the time coming on to this episode and sharing your great wisdom. And thank you everyone for listening, and I'll talk to you next week. Thanks, Tanner. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Thanks for listening. For more free content, check out the links for our YouTube channel, Instagram, and Facebook accounts in the episode description.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

We wish you all healing.