Change Your Brain Every Day - Managing Chronic Pain: Coping Tips For Relief

Episode Date: January 5, 2018

Living with chronic pain is one of the worst experiences one can have, and it can even lead down the path to thoughts of suicide. However, there are proven methods for easing that pain and regaining control over your life. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the common causes of chronic pain, as well as the most effective strategies for bringing relief.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Today, we're going to talk about pain, physical pain, and the impact physical pain has on the brain. Especially chronic pain. Like when people, not just acute pain when you hurt yourself, but when it's chronic and ongoing. It's like that just never goes away.

Well, and when I was in college, I played intramural football, not where you got your head bashed in. Loved football in high school, even though it didn't love me back. And I always played quarterback. And I was running around the right side and I planted my foot. And all of a sudden, I heard a big pop in my right knee. It still bothers you. And it swole up. And that was 40 some years ago. It still bothers you. It still bothers me.

But I know that if I take omega-3 fatty acids, if I take 1,200 milligrams of SAMe, if I stay on an anti-inflammatory diet and I stay away from airports and planes, which is hard for me to do, that it doesn't bother me nearly as much. So that there are things to do and there are things not to do. So there's a reason. So let's back up. It really is worth mentioning why. Everything you just talked about that you avoid in order to feel good increases inflammation. So I have the same problem. I have scoliosis, right? Now, as long as I stretch and sleep and

exercise and eat well and do all these things, my back pain doesn't really flare up. When I don't do those things, you even can feel my back and you're like, wow, your back's kind of out of whack and it hurts. It hurts bad. So inflammation flares up when you eat poorly. You eat a high sugar diet or a diet high in omega-6 fatty acids. When you don't sleep, when you travel a lot, when you're under stress, all of those things increase your inflammation. Anytime inflammation is high, it's going to cause your pain to flare. It's going to make pain worse than normal. All right.

So let's talk about causes of pain and cures. And let's do it in a biopsychosocial spiritual way. Okay. Which I think is just how we think here at Amen Clinics and how you and I teach often. So the biological causes of pain would be trauma. Right. Car accident, sports injury. Right. You know, I did still do the big NFL study and almost all of my players have pain. Right. Sometimes it's disease. Sometimes it's, you know, some structural you're born with. It's their hands.

It's their... Right. So clearly biological. People have migraine headaches. Sure. But what are the biological causes of pain? So trauma, inflammation, which a lot of people don't know about. It could also be an allergy to a food, to something in the air. When histamines are released in your body.

Right. Structural. It can be structural, like scoliosis. It can be osteoporosis. My mother sneezed last year. And she bent over and sneezed and literally broke a vertebrae in her back. And she's like, I'm going to run my car off the road. And I'm like, you're going to be okay. We're going to get you fixed. And my sister was in the room right before the doctor came in just goes I want to know what mom said and I said I'll tell you later. No, I wanted to know now. I'm like they're gonna send her to the funny bar

It was crazy But I mean pain literally makes you want no, it's horrible kill yourself. No, no, no when you're in chronic pain it is Terrible and one of the things I learned No, it's horrible. To kill yourself. No, no, no. When you're in chronic pain, it is terrible. And one of the things I learned, right after I started doing imaging, I had a police officer who was admitted to the hospital under my care. His name was Steve. And he tried to kill himself because he had six back surgeries. And he was so done with the pain and the pain medications and tried to kill himself.

And when I scanned him, his cingulate gyrus, so that's right in the front part of your brain, deep in your frontal lobes, was working incredibly hard. And that's the brain's gear shifter. It allows you to go from thought to thought, move from idea to idea, be flexible, go with the flow. And I had just read an article that SSRIs, so medications that increase serotonin, calm down that part of the brain. So Prozac, Lexapro, Zoloft, Celexa, Lubox, and so on. And so I put him on that and did hypnosis, extremely powerful. I love hypnosis.

Pain. I didn't know then what I know now. I had to put him also on SAMe and omega-3 fatty acids and put them on an anti-inflammatory diet. But just the hypnosis and Prozac, he said, I still hurt, but I don't think about it all the time. So the reason he tried to kill himself is he could never get away from the pain, from the thought of the pain. Doesn't the singular make you obsess about it? Yes.

You just can't let it go. You can't let it go. Right. So that's a physical cause and treatments for pain. There are also psychological causes for pain. We know people who grew up in abusive homes, for example, they have more physical pain. Isn't that interesting? That's so interesting.

That their pain tolerance is less and the more negative thoughts you have, the lower your pain tolerance because you're predicting it's going to be worse. The prediction actually causes your muscles to clamp down. That's so interesting. And it makes it worse. And doesn't that also release stress hormones, which increase inflammation and makes it worse anyways?

It does. So psychological and biological all work together. There are social causes of pain. You know, I think some of the deepest pain that people feel are when their relationships aren't right. Right. Or when they lose someone or something, even a pet sometimes. I mean, you just see people grieve so deeply over something or someone they've become attached to. And emotional pain actually lights up the physical pain centers in the brain. It's very interesting. It's called the anterior, this means toward the front, insular cortex.

And when that is lit up, people have a sense of angst, of negativity. Yeah, it's really interesting. So we had a series of break-ins in our neighborhood, right? And it freaks me out. And so I did some very interesting things to secure my house. But so when the guy was putting some cameras in and doing some things, he's like, you know, this is good if you've got things to protect. And I'm like, you know, I really don't have things to protect. There's really, we're know, I really don't have things to protect. There's really, we're not people who buy a lot of things.

We don't have a lot of things that we're not really into a lot of material things. You know, I mean, I think the most I have is my wedding ring. But there's just not a lot of stuff that we're really that invested in. But I get incredibly anxious and stressed out at the idea of anyone I love being hurt. And that will make me stay up at night. So that's a very powerful thing. And when someone loses someone or the thought of losing someone can be very stressful. And then there are spiritual causes of pain.

If you're not living your moral code or if you feel separated. Or if you're morally bankrupt. Or you're morally bankrupt, you're more likely to have higher levels of pain. And when we think of treating pain or helping people with pain, biopsychosocial spiritual interventions. This is even true with people who aren't purposeful. And no one really thinks about that. But when you're not purposeful, purposeful people live longer, which means that they're living more vibrantly, right? It means you're sick less.

Well, and when I think of spiritual, I think of it in the form of a cross, which is so the horizontal line is your connection with the past. So my grandfather or the future. I just found out my daughter's going to have her third child. It's going to be a little girl called Haven. I'm so happy. Right. So it's just spiritual experience, my connection with the past and the future. And then the vertical line is my connection with the planet.

The healthier the planet is, the healthier I am. And with God, what you believe in God. I've actually never heard you say that. That was very cool. Thank you. I like that. So when I think of spiritual, I think of your past to your future, the planet to God. Has anyone ever told you you're really smart?

Well, thank you. I'm kidding. You hear it all the time. That's how I got you. All right. So biological interventions for pain. And you've heard this all along when you teach your classes on getting people well. One of the most common things they say is their pain has gone down.

Within two weeks, their pain goes down. The Brain Warriors way, the long version, the 26-week version, people decrease their pain by 20%. It's really powerful. And it starts fairly quickly. And I think it's mostly diet-related. But it's interesting, though, because as their diet begins to clean up, they start to sleep better. As they start to sleep better, their stress is better. They manage stress better. We teach them some simple meditation techniques, and then all of a sudden, they're able to manage their diet better. Do you see that? It's like this circle.

So this is so important because the opiate crisis is killing 60,000 people in the United States. It's crazy. And in large part, it's because we take the quick way out of dealing with pain. And we don't put in a biopsychosocial spiritual plan to help people that are in pain. Because we're going to run out of time. Other biological things. So clearly diet is really important. Anti-inflammatory diet, omega-3 fatty acids, SAMe, decreased cortisol and stress, like

you said. And I know we say this over and over and over for different reasons. I cannot stress enough, a simple five to 10 minute meditation. It is one of the most powerful things I have learned. Well, and people would think that's a psychological intervention. No, it's all of it. It's actually a biological intervention. I actually think that it's a little bit of all of it. It is.

And then, of course, killing the ants, the automatic negative thoughts. Negative thoughts cause increased tension immediately, which then will clamp down around nerve cells. Very much has a physiological reaction. To be in pain. Right. Work on improving your relationships because it clearly has less pain when we get along compared to when we don't. Thank God we get along most of the time.

And then make sure you're living with purpose, that you're connected with your past and honor the people there, that you're nurturing the future, that you're nurturing the planet and keeping connected with God. You can feel better by having a clear biopsychosocial, spiritual approach to pain. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review, and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy

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