This 2022 study in the Journal Pain found what I see daily with chronic pain patients. The researchers ‘conclude that chronic back pain is associated with altered threat and safety learning. This ambiguity to emotionally evaluate threat and safety information might lead to overly protective behavior and thus contribute to the maintenance of chronic pain.’ […]
We have tons of clinical data that show positive optimism is related much better health outcomes while negative pessimism relates to poorer health outcomes. One of the ways pessimism shows up is with catastrophizing which is negative thinking or thinking for the worst. Here’s just one example of that where negative pain catastrophizing shows up […]
One of the more common chronic symptoms I treat in people is fatigue. CFS/ME as it’s called, really stops people from moving forward because of the crippling fatigue symptoms it brings. The fatigue symptoms end up reinforcing the belief that something is wrong and maybe I am doing too much. This is not true. This […]
Those who follow me know I am big fan of the science supporting the work I do to help people heal from chronic health conditions. I love it when the title of a complex brain study says exactly what we need to do to help us heal. The title of this study is: ‘Prefrontal Executive […]
Here is an article describing how repressed emotions can affect us and also cause physical somatic symptoms. It’s something I see in my practice and something many of you will relate to as well. What happens with repressed emotions is quite interesting and many times missed by the person experiencing physical symptoms and also the […]
One thing that’s not talked about much in the chronic pain world is what’s called self-efficacy. Self efficacy (SE) is defined in this review study as “the personal confidence to carry out an activity with the aim of successfully achieving a desired outcome. SE is the central motor to developing human motivation, psychosocial well-being, and […]
In this study the authors were looking at whether chronic anger expression or what’s called stonewalling predicted cardiovascular or musculoskeletal complaints in married couples over a period of 20 years. Stonewalling is defined ‘as “tuning out” in response to a partner’s requests to change through criticism, concerns, and nagging. ‘Expressive behaviors associated with stonewalling include […]
Anxiety is probably the biggest thing I see in my practice that causes physical somatic symptoms in the body that are not originating from a physical structural cause. The symptom list is vast, check out the anxiety centre link below and the others to see what physical symptoms anxiety can produce. Anxiety is a brain […]
Researchers at Northwestern University have been studying the brain-chronic pain connection for well over a decade. Based on their multiple studies “we argue that the state of the brain’s emotional and motivational circuitry, as well as its reorganization following a pain-inciting event, determine the transition to pain chronicity.” Once we rule out any major structural issue, […]
I’ve posted before about how we see stronger one-way brain signals from the amygdala to the pre-frontal cortex in anxiety and how this is one-way signaling can cause the amygdala to hijack someone into more anxiety or panic. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/04/stanford-study-finds-stronger-one-way-fear-signals-in-brains-of-.html We also see altered connections in the amygdala to pre-frontal cortex pathway in chronic back pain. […]
