Podcast Episode 5 - Pain science, understanding pain and neural plasticity
Transcription:
Hey there, Neuro Train World. This is Erin and Katie, and myself, Kelly, we're joining you for the month of September. We are excited about entering the fall season, and we have some really interesting classes for you this month that are gonna revolve around our themes. of we're gonna talk about pain. Because we don't want pain. Pain is something we all try to avoid. And the science around it is fascinating and it gives us power so that we can get rid of our pain. So when we are looking at the the class schedule, know that all of our our work is going to kind of compounding interest on each different one. We're gonna start with this little video blurb right now, and it's just a very tip of the iceberg introduction into the rest of the stuff that we're gonna cover, and it's fascinating. So let's take a look at why we get inputs from our environment. Our brain processes that information and it gives us an output and why pain is an output. Erin, do you wanna have anything to say about that? Yeah. I think this is kind of like we we talk about this a lot in our workshop, kind of the setup of the nervous system. So we have we receive inputs as Kelly said, from our environment, we also receive them from our it's called proprioceptive system, which is our 3D map of our body with our muscles and our fascia and ligaments and tendons. And then we have inside our body monitor as well that's in charge of our physiologic system, our organs, our vagus nerve, our vestibular system. And all these things are sending inputs to the brain about where we are in space, what's happening around us, and then our brain’s trying to decide, what does the information mean, and it compares it against other experiences you've had in your life. And then it's trying to decide what to do about that information based off of the information coming in and the brain's understanding of that information. So when we talk about you'll hear us talk about sensory training all the time. We talk about how important the eyes are and the nose and the ears and the skin and fascia, and can I feel sharp, dull, or warm cool? All of that plays a role in how scary the information may or may not be coming into the brain. So if you're actually missing sharp dull around an ankle that you sprain multiple times, that can affect your brain's perception. your foot and where the ground is and which way is up and all of that stuff can play a role in, you know, We say pain because it's pain science, but pain can also be replaced with migraines and dizziness and vertigo and fatigue and nausea and motion sickness and depression and multiple other things. Anxiety. Yeah. But's this specifically we're talking about pain this week because we've been treating pain like an input for four hundred years and it's not an input. We don't have pain receptors There's not a pain center in the brain. It's a multimodal decision off the base off what the brain's interpretation of things are. And then it creates pain to actually modify our behavior, so we don't shred ourselves apart with because we have the capability of actually shattering our own bones and ripping our own muscles just because that strength is there. So any other thoughts on that, Katie? This one is near and dear to me. I found Z health because of a chronic pain condition that I was told was for life. When I got the diagnosis at twenty five years old, I I was told it was something I would learn to deal with, that I would just have to figure it out. It was part of my life forever now. and no one's found a way to cure it. Fast forward nine years, last week I had it removed from my health chart. So my doctor actually moved it from the front page of my chart to the very back and marked it as a resolved condition. And And we both had a little bit of a cry over that because she's never been able to do any that for anyone. I was told they would never be able to do that for me because you have it for life. And she just didn't think that was a thing that could happen either. And so now she knows as a doctor, this can happen. this can happen, people can recover, make full recoveries. Unfortunately, that meant that, like, I had to go back to school and and learn all of the pain neuroscience and mass bookshelves of literature and, you know, do a lot of work to to heal myself. And thankfully, I have Kelly and Erin who have helped along the way, Zachariah and a lot of other people who have helped me get here. but that gives me the unique perspective of looking at this that any chronic pain condition, your back hurts your knee hurts. You've been told that you have this for life. I can confidently say it's not for life. It doesn't have to be. And it's these techniques that worked for me. It's learning about sensory. It's learning that my pain was in my upper left quadrant, my my left arm, primarily. But part of that healing was not necessarily just working on left arm. Like Erin said, if you have a scar on your ankle and you don't have the ability to to tell the difference between sharp and dull or hot and cold or warm and and cool. Your brain may see that as a threat. because how is it supposed to know if you're stepping on something sharp or something dull or if it's a threat. So sometimes it gets a little hyper focused. and overreacts to things because we don't our brains don't they don't know. They don't have enough information. And so realizing, cleaning up that scar, getting things so that my brain knows the difference on that scar between two fingers touching it or one finger touching it or sharp or dull. whatever. My inputs are much clearer now. And now my outputs don't include a whole lot of pain. I don't have chronic pain anymore. the pain that I do have is often very easy to deal with, and I can get rid of it pretty quickly, and my body is just fine. I don't get injured very easily. but all that has come with increasing a lot of inputs and getting that whole system a little bit finer tuned. So, yeah, I think this is gonna be a really incredible month for us, for our clients, for any of those, you know, those of you that may wanna start joining us to learn Oh, I've been told this is for life, but maybe it's not. Maybe. We can find some relief in there for you. And that's always our goal is to get people to lead the lives that they want to lead at any age without pain. And I know that all three of us are, like, examples of that because we've all experienced, you know, certain level of pain. We, as z health practitioners, we know, like, why that is and how to get ourselves out of it. And we've all been successful at doing that. And when I have someone come into my studio, most of the time, they're in a lot of pain, and that's why they come. And I always love letting them know about the the thing that that study that fascinated me a lot in my see health training was a very, very large study that was done. Thousands of participants where they looked at MRI images of different body parts. Now they've done it with the spine, they've done it with hips, they've done it with knees, and then they correlate that to how much pain the person is experiencing. and we know that the image of what it looks like on the inside of your body does not equal the amount of pain that you're sensing. and that people with deterioration on the inside, what it looks like might be pretty shitty. Sorry. But in reality, Maybe that person doesn't have actually any pain at all, whereas another person, their image might not look that bad, but they are an incredible pain. So these things that don't line up, and I like I think that's really empowering for people to know that the image they get from their doctor's office doesn't mean that's their reality. And we talk about why that is and what we can do about it. Awesome. Yeah. And the last little piece that we'll chime in here is pain is part of, like, neuroplastic change. And so If your brain practices pain to change your behavior and it's effective and it makes you lay down and stop and slow down and maybe eat more or sleep more or whatever your body's trying to get out of that. It it starts to become more efficient at creating that output over time. And then that's where the maladaptive plasticity comes in. And so all these cool neural modulation things that we do in class are always to kind of interrupt that maladaptive plasticity and modulate it so that you're starting to shift things. And that's the beauty behind the functional neurology stuff that we do blended into that pain science piece is, your nervous systems unique to you your pain is personal to you and your brain is creating that for a reason and that doesn't mean that it's in your head and that you're crazy. It just means that your brain is creating that output unique to you in your situation based off the context of your life and whatever stressors you've got going on. And then our job is to go, hey, let's identify some of these stressors. Let's actually see, maybe your eyes don't work well together. Let's maybe work on that. So today in in class, maybe we have a a tattoo, which is a nice big scar. And maybe you've never taken the time to rehab Sharp and dull and warm and cool on that side. You know, so this is gonna be a really cool opportunity for you to come to class and actually get a nice inventory of what what senses are you missing out? And are there discrepancies from side to side? You know, nobody has a perfect nervous system all the time. It's dynamic. And and then we can actually start to work on getting you out of pain, improving range of motion, building strength, we'll talk about pain avoidance and how that's a cycle that we perpetuate by not moving as much or not pain avoidance movement. It is pain avoidance. It's also movement avoidance because things hurt and then we don't move as much and then that perpetuates the cycle and things become deconditioned and there's a whole entire loop there that has happens. And so how do we break that cycle too? So definitely join us for class this week. Is there anything else you guys wanna add to the Our Q and As on the second and fourth Wednesdays will also be centered around chronic pain, what it is. pain in general, not just chronic, but but what creates pain? What's the cycle? What are the the receptors in your body doing to make that happen? And how we can help that. And that's particularly the metabolic q and a. So our neuro class on Tuesdays and Thursdays will also be going through, like, different topics as well. So we'll do our next video on the metabolics so stay tuned.