Speaker 1: I'm TT and I'm Zachiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: We started talking about the brain last week in our
Speaker 1: grab bag, but that was really just a preview, just
Speaker 1: a little snippet. That's right, realizing how important the brain
Speaker 1: is and how much we need sleep and all the
Speaker 1: things that's beneficial for down to bone growth for kids
Speaker 1: and metabolism for adults. Okay, that's right, Because y'all were
Speaker 1: talking about doing the Great lock in and we said,
Speaker 1: you need to do the Great lay down. Okay, and
Speaker 1: it's time to make a little commotion for the brain.
Speaker 1: Neuroscience is who we thought rocket science was. You know
Speaker 1: how people say, right, it's not rocket science. Neuroscience actually
Speaker 1: is that gru Okay, that's where the complexity lies. We
Speaker 1: were looking outside when we needed to turn inside, turn
Speaker 1: this body inside out and take a look into the brain.
Speaker 1: So this episode, we're looking at the neuroscience of pain,
Speaker 1: and we have the perfect guest expert to do just that.
Speaker 1: All right, TT, let's jump into the recitation. What do
Speaker 1: we want to know? I want to know stuff like
Speaker 1: how is neuroscience at work in our everyday lives? What
Speaker 1: is the mechanism of pain? Like how do you go
Speaker 1: from incident to ouch? What is going on in my cranium? Yes,
Speaker 1: and then I want to know more about like the
Speaker 1: memories and stuff tied into pain, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of conversation on my timline right now about this. You
Speaker 1: know that book The Body keeps the Score. Yes, people
Speaker 1: are saying it's not right or it's trash. Now that's
Speaker 1: what Atlanta told me. Really, Atlanta told me the body
Speaker 1: does not keep the score. She was like, that's why
Speaker 1: you don't remember giving birth to that baby. Oh see,
Speaker 1: I haven't read the full thing. I don't know all
Speaker 1: the commentary. Has anybody else heard this? And even if
Speaker 1: what's going on there is different from what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: does the body keep the score in regards to pain
Speaker 1: in some kind of way? Does the brain keep the score? Then? Right,
Speaker 1: and then there's a cute versix chronic pain, And these
Speaker 1: are different pathways in my mind. They are like different experiences.
Speaker 1: But my mind has been wrong a time or two. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've only seen it once. I've only seen it wrong once,
Speaker 1: and I Also, you know, I'm on the woo woop
Speaker 1: party the Internet, and so I want to know about
Speaker 1: some of the wellness advice around pain, like mindfulness, cold plunges,
Speaker 1: breath work. Do those actually change how we experience pain?
Speaker 1: Or is that Gwyneth Paltrow goop stuff. No shade to
Speaker 1: her as an actress, because I liked her in Shakespeare
Speaker 1: in Love, Iron Man, and you know I liked her
Speaker 1: in Contagent. But I have not forgotten about that lawsuit
Speaker 1: where she was advertising those jade eggs saying it was
Speaker 1: balancing hormones and regulating mistro cycles. And it wasn't. Yeah, Gwyneth,
Speaker 1: that was right, It wasn't. But to answer all of
Speaker 1: these questions, we have the perfect guest expert. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to let them introduce themselves and let them tell
Speaker 1: us how they got into the neuroscience of pain.
Speaker 2: My name's Lindsay Edgoe.
Speaker 3: I'm a neuroscience patry candidate at the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: and I am really interested in the neuro circuits that
Speaker 3: underlie pain. It's interesting because I get this question a lot,
Speaker 3: like what got you interested in pain neuroscience? And the
Speaker 3: answer is it was honestly random, because when I was
Speaker 3: an undergraduate, I was looking.
Speaker 2: For research labs to join and get more experience doing research.
Speaker 3: So I was looking through Pitt's website and I saw
Speaker 3: this lab that studied something called optogenetics, which is pretty
Speaker 3: much a way to use light to change the activity
Speaker 3: of brain cells. And I thought that was so cool
Speaker 3: that I immediately, you know, the professor saying I wanted
Speaker 3: to work with him, and he said, okay, that's great.
Speaker 2: I study pain, so I study.
Speaker 3: Optientemics in the context of pain relief. So that's why
Speaker 3: I ended up in the pain field. And then from
Speaker 3: there my interest just grew and grew and grew, and
Speaker 3: I just stuck with.
Speaker 2: It and planned to in the future too.
Speaker 1: There's neuroscience and basically so many parts of our everyday life,
Speaker 1: and I'd love for you to share anything that you
Speaker 1: feel like people don't commonly think of. And you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: neuroscience at play in action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, it is at play all the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, our brains generate the conscious experience we live
Speaker 3: every day. I mean, thinking about where you are right now,
Speaker 3: even as one of the listeners, you're probably either walking
Speaker 3: down the street or sitting on a train during your commute.
Speaker 3: Think about the ground under your feet, the feeling of
Speaker 3: the chair under your legs, how your body feels in space.
Speaker 3: Are you in any pain, do you have any aches
Speaker 3: or sore spots right now?
Speaker 1: Going on?
Speaker 2: What do you see in front of you.
Speaker 3: There's all of this visual information being fed to your
Speaker 3: brain every second, and you're honestly dealing with so much,
Speaker 3: like general sensory information in general, from all your sensings
Speaker 3: at all times.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 3: I think about this all the time, but it's amazing
Speaker 3: how the brain can even reconcile this all at once
Speaker 3: because so much that's happening to us at all times.
Speaker 3: But we also have to like put most of it
Speaker 3: in the back of our heads and kind of just
Speaker 3: treat it as background as we do whatever task we're doing,
Speaker 3: like listening to the podcast, processing the words that you're
Speaker 3: listening to right now, whatever you might be doing right
Speaker 3: It's like the brain is constantly active and constantly doing
Speaker 3: this thing.
Speaker 1: So everything is neuroscience. Like our entire existence, everything that
Speaker 1: we do, feel, experience all relates to neuroscience because our
Speaker 1: brains are part of those interactions all the time. What
Speaker 1: a huge topic. Yes, exact now we know it's a
Speaker 1: neuroscience plays a role in every aspect of our lives.
Speaker 1: But we want to focus on and pain, which is
Speaker 1: your specific research. Well, I know pain is a part
Speaker 1: of everyone's life, Like we experienced some type of pain
Speaker 1: in some type of way at any given moment during
Speaker 1: our days. When we think about pain, it's usually like
Speaker 1: physical damage, like where you can see the damage on
Speaker 1: your body. My son actually hit me in the eye accidentally.
Speaker 1: He's not abusing me. I was in so much pain
Speaker 1: and you could see it. My eye was like red
Speaker 1: and swollen and it really really hurt, really bad. But
Speaker 1: what about the experience of pain in the brain? What
Speaker 1: is going on? How we go from like incident to ouch,
Speaker 1: and like what happens in between those moments in your brain.
Speaker 3: So not to rub it in your face, but let's
Speaker 3: use your eye be hurt as an example here. Okay,
Speaker 3: the first thing that happened when he hits your eye
Speaker 3: was you probably closed it immediately. This is like your
Speaker 3: reflex response. So this really quick signal gets sent to
Speaker 3: your cord and it tells your muscles clutsure eye.
Speaker 2: Somebody's going on.
Speaker 3: And then very very very soon after you start feeling it,
Speaker 3: so that information travels from the nerves in your eye
Speaker 3: to the spinal cord and then travels from the spinal
Speaker 3: cord up to your brain, up to the airs that
Speaker 3: are going to process how you're feeling. Not only the
Speaker 3: quote unquote sensation of it, which is how much it hurts,
Speaker 3: how it feels, was it sharp, was it dull? Where
Speaker 3: is that even located, but also all the other aspects
Speaker 3: of pain, like bringing it to your conscious attention. So
Speaker 3: pain hurts, pain is annoying. I know you were not
Speaker 3: happy when your eye got hurt. It not only tells
Speaker 3: you what hurts, but also affects your emotions. It's like
Speaker 3: the quote unquote suffering associated with that physical sensation, and
Speaker 3: it overlaps with all these different circuits in your brain
Speaker 3: that process emotion and mood. So it's this very complex
Speaker 3: experience that involves things like emotion and attention, and you
Speaker 3: might think about it later to so memory, the memory
Speaker 3: of that too gets encoded. So it's this huge, very
Speaker 3: complex process that starts with something interacting with your eye
Speaker 3: and ending with this pretty complex experience that you will
Speaker 3: remember afterwards.
Speaker 1: Right right, Lindsay I love how you broke that down
Speaker 1: because I feel like pain is this thing we do
Speaker 1: not have a good grasp on. We have so many advances,
Speaker 1: so much technology, so many things we know, and pain
Speaker 1: feels like this hard thing for us to wrap our
Speaker 1: arms around. And I don't hear people talk about the
Speaker 1: emotional aspect of pain. But two or three episodes ago,
Speaker 1: we talked to doctor Jessica Bodie, who's also at the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania at the School of Medicine, and doctor
Speaker 1: Bodie talked about are iFIT, which is the eating disorder
Speaker 1: where you have like restrictive eating, and she talked about
Speaker 1: how people who have early pain from like gastrointestinal problems
Speaker 1: or diet jest of issues, it makes them hesitant to
Speaker 1: try new foods and do different things because of the
Speaker 1: memory of that pain. And it also made me think
Speaker 1: about something that I haven't talked about a lot. I
Speaker 1: am technically on vacation right but I'm doing a lot
Speaker 1: of physical activity now. I had about of sciatica a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and I have been so nervous to
Speaker 1: retrigger that shooting pain, and it makes me walk gingerly
Speaker 1: when I'm doing different it makes me change my whole everything,
Speaker 1: and even when I think about what I couldn't do
Speaker 1: and how I felt when I was going through this,
Speaker 1: and it was almost like a depression in addition to
Speaker 1: the physical ailment. Are we starting to understand more about
Speaker 1: like what are you learning in your lab about the
Speaker 1: emotional ties to pain?
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, So before we even talk about that, Like,
Speaker 3: there's what you mentioned having sciatica. There's a difference between
Speaker 3: this everyday pain that you might feel from stubbing your
Speaker 3: toe or touching on hot stove and this long term
Speaker 3: chronic form of pain that can happen from nerve injuries
Speaker 3: like psiatica, and that chronic pain largely uses different brain
Speaker 3: circuits than that acute type of pain, and it's also
Speaker 3: tightened with the emotional stuff and you form that memory
Speaker 3: over time too. So for example, my dad also had
Speaker 3: zyetica and he was very unhappy. And a lot of
Speaker 3: people who have chronic pain also co present with disorders
Speaker 3: like depression and anxiety, And it sucks because then anxiety
Speaker 3: and stress also interact with pain circuits to make pain
Speaker 3: feel even worse. So the stress from feeling pain can
Speaker 3: also increase your pain perception and it's like this destructive cycle.
Speaker 3: And if you think about it, evolutionarily, an animal would
Speaker 3: want to feel bad after feeling pain because the goal
Speaker 3: is to avoid physical.
Speaker 2: Harm so that you can continue your species.
Speaker 3: But it's like that way out of order where you
Speaker 3: feel bad and you feel worse, and you feel worse
Speaker 3: and you feel worse, and it's kind of hard sometimes
Speaker 3: to break out of it. That's why a lot of
Speaker 3: people find that their chronic pain disorders get better after
Speaker 3: getting things like cognitive behavioral therapy or something called pain
Speaker 3: repressing therapy, which separates the feeling of pain from the
Speaker 3: fear of it and that anxiety that comes with it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's deep. That is very very deep.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about different areas of your brain
Speaker 1: that are active during different types of pain. What is
Speaker 1: the difference in the brain signal, So like I get
Speaker 1: hit in the eye, I stubb my toe, I get
Speaker 1: a paper cut, I burn my hand, versus I have
Speaker 1: this injury from a car accident that is really causing
Speaker 1: me a lot of pain. The signals that your brain
Speaker 1: is sending, or the areas of your brain that are
Speaker 1: being activated, what are those different areas and why is
Speaker 1: that the response for those different types of pain.
Speaker 3: So the answer is like pretty complicated because it.
Speaker 2: Changes in every area.
Speaker 3: So there are areas that are involved in both the
Speaker 3: short term as we call it a cute pain and
Speaker 3: that low long term chronic pain. And then for example,
Speaker 3: I study in an area called the thalmis, and the
Speaker 3: thalamus is involved in both acute and chronic pain.
Speaker 2: And then also quote unquote emotional.
Speaker 3: Part of the physical pain is processed like in the
Speaker 3: middle of the thalmis, and then that sensation is on
Speaker 3: the outside of the thelmis or the edges of it.
Speaker 3: So it's like a cute and chronic pain kind of
Speaker 3: overlap too sometimes and then also don't overlap in other
Speaker 3: brain areas, so it kind of just depends on the
Speaker 3: area you're talking about. So then the question of why
Speaker 3: would this happen, Well, one is that chronic pain doesn't
Speaker 3: start chronic, It starts acute.
Speaker 2: So it's a transition. So it starts off in certain
Speaker 2: areas and then.
Speaker 3: It kind of like these brain patterns and these networks shift.
Speaker 2: It's called like synaps of plasticity.
Speaker 3: This I don't call it learning, but it's this changing
Speaker 3: the brain changes the way it's wired to kind of
Speaker 3: accommodate this new state in which you are in pain
Speaker 3: almost constantly, and that looks different just as a result,
Speaker 3: like I said earlier, because of all these things that
Speaker 3: the pain is doing to affect the other brain processes
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: So it's very complicated and it's different in every person.
Speaker 3: So it would be really easy if you could just
Speaker 3: target a particular brain area right and be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is gonna look exactly like this one is a cute,
Speaker 3: and exactly like that one is chronic. But it sometimes
Speaker 3: differs between people, so it's not as easy as to treat.
Speaker 1: Even our perceptions of pain is different from person to person,
Speaker 1: so what is very painful for one person might not
Speaker 1: be as painful. I think about when folks be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm tenderheaded, like when they get braids done and stuff,
Speaker 1: and to me, like when I'm getting braids done and
Speaker 1: they're doing it really tight, it feels very nice to me,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know why. Like the play, I'm like, ooh,
Speaker 1: that feels nice. Like certain parts of my head, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wish you could undo this braid, redo it, because
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is about it, But that
Speaker 1: makes sense. People are experiencing pain in different ways. Is
Speaker 1: that something that is geneicic or is it something that
Speaker 1: you know it's just I'm lucky that I'm not tender.
Speaker 2: I think it's a mixture of both.
Speaker 3: Zakia was talking about certain pains that you feel can
Speaker 3: change the way you experience pain in the future. So
Speaker 3: maybe when you were a kid, you just remember how
Speaker 3: much it used to hurt, and like now you hate
Speaker 3: it and it feels even worse to you now. But
Speaker 3: sometimes it could just be genetic, like you just have
Speaker 3: a different pain tong th to somebody else, So it
Speaker 3: differs in that way. But the other thing I want
Speaker 3: to say too is pain doesn't always feel bad. I mean,
Speaker 3: think about situations where you are in physical pain, but
Speaker 3: you like it, like a really deep tissue massage exactly. Yes,
Speaker 3: So that reminded me of that where like they're pulling
Speaker 3: like a scalp.
Speaker 2: I cannot relate to that feeling, but I do know
Speaker 2: what it's like to get DeepC massage and be.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, this hurts so good. So a lot of
Speaker 3: these tools like mindfulness. Earlier I was talking about therapy,
Speaker 3: like cognitive behavioral therapy, even things like hypnosis. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to tell you they don't work, because for some
Speaker 3: people they work a lot, but I will say they're
Speaker 3: not what we would consider a cure because they don't work.
Speaker 2: On everybody and they don't work every time.
Speaker 1: Okay, so these techniques might not work on everybody, but
Speaker 1: for the people that they do work on or the
Speaker 1: people they work for, how sway, how does it work?
Speaker 1: How are they turned down the pain dial?
Speaker 3: Something we study in our lab two is really big
Speaker 3: part of my PhD project is the natural opioid system.
Speaker 3: So you might have heard of opioids drugs like morphine
Speaker 3: or fentanyl even or heroin. Your brain makes its own opioids,
Speaker 3: natural ones. A good example you might know is endorphins
Speaker 3: that get released, you know, after exercise. Those are actually
Speaker 3: natural opiend molecules that can relieve pain. So there's this huge,
Speaker 3: growing field of literature where people are studying how natural
Speaker 3: opioids and other natural chemicals can help cause pain relief
Speaker 3: without any drugs, and how those are released during things
Speaker 3: like hypnosis or mindfulness and other things like that.
Speaker 2: So there's definitely a basis to it, and.
Speaker 3: I think the ultimate goal is to kind of quote
Speaker 3: unquote hack that natural opioid system. Because opioid drugs have
Speaker 3: harmful side effects. They can block your muscle movement, including
Speaker 3: the muscles that help you breathe or which can be fatal.
Speaker 3: They can be highly addictive. But these natural opioids are
Speaker 3: released in very tiny amounts in very specific parts of
Speaker 3: the brain in a way that gives you that pain
Speaker 3: relief without this dependence or any of these negative side
Speaker 3: effects by like bathing the whole body in opioids like
Speaker 3: you would when you take a drug.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now I really want to zoom into your
Speaker 1: specific research. What questions are you trying to answer with
Speaker 1: your PhD work and how are you studying that and
Speaker 1: what has surprised you so far.
Speaker 3: The first question that I tried to answer was based
Speaker 3: on this natural pain relieving process. And something I didn't
Speaker 3: mention is another time that these natural opiids get released
Speaker 3: is during placebo, during what we call this expectation of
Speaker 3: pain relief, just the expectation that something will relieve your
Speaker 3: pain can be enough to relieve your pain because of
Speaker 3: the release of these natural opious So what we did
Speaker 3: in our lab was we use this model where we
Speaker 3: basically taught animals to relieve their own pain, kind of
Speaker 3: trick them into doing it, because you know, you can't.
Speaker 2: Just be like, relieve your pain, it's a mouse.
Speaker 3: So what we did was we would put them into
Speaker 3: two different chambers and be like, in this chamber, you're
Speaker 3: gonna feel pain from like a warm plate that's under them.
Speaker 3: Not too hot that they burn their skin or anything
Speaker 3: like that, but definitely uncomfortable, something that they don't want
Speaker 3: to be in. So you put them in one chamber
Speaker 3: and say this chamber is associated with pain and the
Speaker 3: other one is not. Every day you put them in
Speaker 3: the pain chamber and they are able to freely run
Speaker 3: into the one that's safe, and they learned that when
Speaker 3: they make this action into this quote unquote safe chamber,
Speaker 3: their pain is going to be relieved. Afterwards, we make
Speaker 3: that safe chamber unsafe again. So they've run into the
Speaker 3: other chamber, and you would expect them to realize that
Speaker 3: it's hot and start exhibiting behaviors that show that they're
Speaker 3: in pain.
Speaker 2: But instead we saw that the.
Speaker 3: Animals would run into the other chamber and even though
Speaker 3: they're still on a hot plate, they would be sitting there.
Speaker 2: Wow, chilling.
Speaker 3: They weren't even they weren't even moving much. They weren't
Speaker 3: like in any kind of distress. It wouldn't last very long.
Speaker 3: We'd be around ninety seconds. But in that time, yeah, honestly,
Speaker 3: it is long. In that time, they would mostly be still,
Speaker 3: maybe a little bit of grooming, and then you would
Speaker 3: see them be like, oh wait, it would wear off
Speaker 3: a little bit. They'd start walking around and then they'd
Speaker 3: be like, oh no. They run to the other side.
Speaker 3: They realize, oh wait, nothing's safe, and by then the
Speaker 3: tests almost over.
Speaker 2: So we just put them out.
Speaker 3: But it's this process of that expectation, just the expectation
Speaker 3: that it's going to be safe. There is enough for
Speaker 3: even a mouse to quote unquote like relieve its own pain.
Speaker 3: So then what we do in the lab is we
Speaker 3: have different brain areas that we know are involved in
Speaker 3: pain relief and this natural opiod release.
Speaker 2: So what we're doing is tracking the activity of.
Speaker 3: Cells that are involved in pain relief during this process
Speaker 3: and then also measuring the actual opioids that get released
Speaker 3: and just seeing how can we further understand this process.
Speaker 3: This model was just created in the past few years,
Speaker 3: and we really haven't had a good one since then,
Speaker 3: and we didn't really have a good one before then,
Speaker 3: so still early stages. But it's really cool because we
Speaker 3: get to really investigate these brains because of how they
Speaker 3: change in this process, so that we can work towards
Speaker 3: building tools to harness what we've.
Speaker 2: Learned and replicating in a way.
Speaker 3: That's safe for people, well, first mice and then people
Speaker 3: who live with chronic pain.
Speaker 1: I can draw so many parallels, which I know, lindsay,
Speaker 1: you may say not scientific, don't do as a kid,
Speaker 1: but I was just thinking when you were talking about this,
Speaker 1: about this model of like expectation of pain relief, and
Speaker 1: we learned this from being children. You know, you get
Speaker 1: a boo boo and a parent comforts you and they like,
Speaker 1: let me kiss it is gonna make it feel better.
Speaker 1: You think it feels better. They didn't do anything, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's just the expectation that it feels better. All
Speaker 1: they're doing is spreading those germs around.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: I disinfected, right. I think about that, and then I
Speaker 1: think about this as an adult. And I'm extrapolating a
Speaker 1: little bit, quite a bit, but I'm thinking about what
Speaker 1: it means to move through a world that may feel unsafe,
Speaker 1: but to have community that does feel safe, Like when
Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna be with my friends, I have
Speaker 1: the expectation of pain relief, and I'm already feeling good
Speaker 1: expecting that. So even if things are unbearable, they're a
Speaker 1: little less unbearable, right, Like it feels a little bit
Speaker 1: more tolerable, even for ninety seconds, Like the animals and
Speaker 1: the experiment like the same thing, And I think there's
Speaker 1: something really beautiful to that, for sure.
Speaker 2: The powerfulacebo.
Speaker 3: It's one of the strongest placebo effects that your body
Speaker 3: can do when it comes to pain. So much of
Speaker 3: that experience of pain is mediated and generated by the
Speaker 3: brain and can be changed by the brain too, if
Speaker 3: only it could be done very easily.
Speaker 2: We're still working on that.
Speaker 1: I know that for me when I think about like
Speaker 1: just like common pain that I have, it's like headaches,
Speaker 1: back aches, my shoulder might be hurting or something like that.
Speaker 1: I have some wrist pain and I'm always taking like
Speaker 1: a tile and all or something like that. And I
Speaker 1: know that a lot of folks don't. It always goes
Speaker 1: viral on my timeline, which means it's a question I
Speaker 1: have too, like how do these pain relievers work, Like,
Speaker 1: how does it know that the pain is in my wrist?
Speaker 1: How does it know that my head hurts? And these
Speaker 1: are questions that folks have. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how some of these pain relieving medicines drugs
Speaker 1: work and what they're doing when they get in our body.
Speaker 2: I can talk about hyberprofen for example.
Speaker 3: Hyberprofen is what we call an instead, so it stands
Speaker 3: for a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug.
Speaker 2: If you have a stomach ache or a wrist ache
Speaker 2: and you take.
Speaker 3: A certain amount of eyberprofen, it's not necessarily that the
Speaker 3: hyberprofen is traveling to your wrists or your belly and
Speaker 3: telling it come.
Speaker 2: It's really.
Speaker 3: Going all over the body and it's just floating around
Speaker 3: and relieving inflammation. So if you have a kind of
Speaker 3: pain that's like driven by inflammation, then just putting this
Speaker 3: drug in your system, it'll eventually get to that area
Speaker 3: and fee your blood and then relieve that and that
Speaker 3: can help reduce the amount of pain signals that get
Speaker 3: sent to your brain. Or maybe you're used to taking
Speaker 3: iboprofen all the time and you know what's worked before,
Speaker 3: so just the process of taking that truck can be
Speaker 3: enough to at least help their brain be.
Speaker 2: Like ooh, this painerly is coming.
Speaker 1: I'm going to just start doing the motion. TT's mind
Speaker 1: is strong. I could give TT a jelly bean and
Speaker 1: she'll be like pain relieved, okay, the same way braining
Speaker 1: up her scalp feels wonderful. I think you should study
Speaker 1: TT and the pain. Don't study means so scary. I
Speaker 1: know we're coming close to time. I want to ask
Speaker 1: you one more thing. I'm curious as we continue to
Speaker 1: learn more. I think there were things before people used
Speaker 1: to laugh about the placebo effect, and it's like, now, look,
Speaker 1: you know we're changing, we know more, we are opening
Speaker 1: our minds more. I'm curious about what you might be
Speaker 1: excited about. I feel like there's neuroscience in the news
Speaker 1: all the time. Recently, I saw something about phantom limbs,
Speaker 1: like when somebody loses a limb and that they still
Speaker 1: feel the limb being there. And now we know. I
Speaker 1: saw a paper that just came out like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: brain has a map of the body and it doesn't
Speaker 1: change when you have like a limb amputated. So it
Speaker 1: makes sense things that people thought were like oh, they
Speaker 1: don't really feel this. We are continuing to expand what
Speaker 1: we know about what the brain does. What are you
Speaker 1: excited about, what do you see in the pipeline, or
Speaker 1: what do you not see but want to see in
Speaker 1: your field? Any of those.
Speaker 3: So something I'm personally excited about is another side of
Speaker 3: pain that is studied less, and that is something called
Speaker 3: visceral pain or this like internal pain that might happen.
Speaker 3: So like I mentioned earlier, stomach aches, pains in your
Speaker 3: intestines from insulatory bowel, moving out of the intestines, pelvic
Speaker 3: pain from periods, women's health. There's so many understudied topics
Speaker 3: within that field and how the brain processes those types
Speaker 3: of pain, because we're beginning to understand it's not the
Speaker 3: exact same way as you would feel when you have
Speaker 3: something that gives you pain on your skin versus internal organs.
Speaker 3: So I think that the field is definitely learning more
Speaker 3: about things like endometrios is pain or sickle cell pain
Speaker 3: and then colon cancer pain, these things that come from
Speaker 3: these internal organs that kind of got a later start
Speaker 3: to being studied, And I'm really excited about that, and
Speaker 3: that's the kind of work I want to do in
Speaker 3: the future. My goal is to end up starting my
Speaker 3: own lab and that's what I want to study in
Speaker 3: that so I'm very excited about that space, especially as
Speaker 3: it applies to people with pain disorders that are just
Speaker 3: not studied as much as others are. I'm very excited
Speaker 3: about the way the field is going too, and I
Speaker 3: know that if we broaden the types of things that
Speaker 3: we study and we fund and we really go in depth,
Speaker 3: I think we will definitely have.
Speaker 2: A bigger impact as a field and people won't.
Speaker 3: Just think of pain as oh, that's the thing I
Speaker 3: feel sometimes when I stub my toe, but really as
Speaker 3: something that can really impact somebody's entire life and does
Speaker 3: require a lot of time, attention, and money to help solve.
Speaker 1: Yes, Lindsey, I think you've given us a lot to
Speaker 1: think about. I know I'm going to be taking that
Speaker 1: expectation of the pain and trying to apply that to
Speaker 1: all things in my life. Okay, is there anything else
Speaker 1: you think our listeners should know?
Speaker 3: Well, all just said something I say all the time,
Speaker 3: your experience of pain, somebody might be telling you you're
Speaker 3: making it up. And even if there is no quote
Speaker 3: unquote evidence in your physical body, that you're experiencing that pain.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that your pain isn't real.
Speaker 3: Like I said, it is an experience generated by your brain,
Speaker 3: and it is felt by you and it is processed
Speaker 3: in complex ways throughout your body and affects your life.
Speaker 3: So that does not mean that it is not real.
Speaker 3: And honor that. And definitely, like I said, there's no
Speaker 3: absolute cure for pain, but there are many many strategies
Speaker 3: that many people find super helpful that I've changed their lives.
Speaker 3: Please do your research, find what works for you, and
Speaker 3: I'm rooting for you and for your release.
Speaker 1: Love it. Thank you so much for joining us today, Lindsay,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: This is really cool, you know.
Speaker 1: T T This lap really opened my eyes. I feel
Speaker 1: like pain is something that all of us experience, but
Speaker 1: hearing it broken down in this way, it makes me
Speaker 1: think of it like a lot differently, not even just
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, Like it's so much more complex.
Speaker 1: Like the way that I experience pain and the way
Speaker 1: that you experience pain is different and all valid, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And so it's just like we
Speaker 1: all have to be a lot more understanding and open
Speaker 1: our minds up to people having different experiences than we are.
Speaker 1: It feels just like the Arfit episode that we did
Speaker 1: where it was just like, oh, somebody that has this disorder,
Speaker 1: you know, is experiencing this. And it's not just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a picky eater, or why don't you like this thing?
Speaker 1: How come you're only eating whatever chicken tenders at the restaurant.
Speaker 1: We have to take a step back and be like, listen,
Speaker 1: everyone is different, Yes, and I think we just touched
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg when it comes to like
Speaker 1: chronic pain, and when Lindsay was explaining these emotional aspects
Speaker 1: and how you remember things and how early experiences or
Speaker 1: late experiences can make you want to avoid pain. I've
Speaker 1: never broken a bone. I don't want to, Okay, Like,
Speaker 1: just thinking about all of those things and how the colors,
Speaker 1: how we move through the world, how we anticipate pain
Speaker 1: or anticipate relief from it, it just was so much.
Speaker 1: I feel like it just cracked my skull open just
Speaker 1: a bit. I've never broken a bone, I've never been
Speaker 1: stung by a bee. I don't want any of those things.
Speaker 1: And so yes, when I see that bee, I'm taking
Speaker 1: off honey. Okay, Yeah. My friend turned to flow joe H.
Speaker 1: That's right. A big thank you to Lindsey Edgoe, also
Speaker 1: known as neuro Melody on Instagram. Check out the show description.
Speaker 1: We will have her handle there. You can click and
Speaker 1: learn more about neuroscience directly from her. You can find
Speaker 1: us on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast, ct
Speaker 1: is on X and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho,
Speaker 1: and you can find Zakiya at z said So. Dope
Speaker 1: Labs is a production of Leimanada Media. Our supervising producer
Speaker 1: is Keegan Zimma and our producer is Issara Asevez. Dope
Speaker 1: Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed by James Farber.
Speaker 1: Limanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger.
Speaker 1: Executive producer from iHeart podcast is Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead
Speaker 1: is Alison Kanter. Original music composed and produced by taking
Speaker 1: Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is executive produced by us T T Show
Speaker 1: Dia and Zakiyah Watki