Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: and Jerry's out there running around somewhere. We just gave
Speaker 1: her a hot foot. It's hilarious. Uh, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should not tried. Are continuing exploration of pain? Mhm.
Speaker 1: What else have we talked about with paint? We did
Speaker 1: one on the pain scales, okay a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and uh, then we did one on something about perceiving pain. Well,
Speaker 1: this one, this one, this is just totally stuff you
Speaker 1: should know them because we did a bunch of like
Speaker 1: more niche stuff and now we're going back and doing
Speaker 1: like the umbrella topic and we're talking about pain, which, Um,
Speaker 1: is there a super ancient old evolutionary Um, right, I
Speaker 1: guess that's shared basically throughout all living things. I would
Speaker 1: say it's a pretty fair guess. I think so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because um, there's something that pain pain specifically, which is this.
Speaker 1: We'll get into defining it and how hard that is
Speaker 1: in a second, but um, it seems to be a
Speaker 1: a fairly universal, almost universal process where our body says, hey,
Speaker 1: there's something really bad going on, say on your hand,
Speaker 1: So move your hand away from wherever it is in
Speaker 1: space right now, and hopefully that will help keep it
Speaker 1: from getting further damage. Like pain is a signal saying, um,
Speaker 1: do something, dummy, move and it's it. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's you know, you see it in and basically any
Speaker 1: animal we've ever encountered, including the beaver and the porcupine.
Speaker 1: That's right. And by the way, we did other people
Speaker 1: who can't feel pain ten years ago. Yeah, it actually
Speaker 1: seems longer ago than that. That's funny because I thought
Speaker 1: pain Scales was forever ago and it was so Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no sense of time anymore. So, so we
Speaker 1: are talking about pain, Chuck, you feel pain right or
Speaker 1: do you have a high pain threshold? Are you sensitive? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: you know it's funny because I went back and listen
Speaker 1: to the Pain Scales and I kind of chatted about
Speaker 1: that for a bit. But I have a pretty high
Speaker 1: pain threshold. Yeah, okay, I would say mine's average. Let's
Speaker 1: just go with that. I wonder what I said in
Speaker 1: the Pain Scales app because there's no way I didn't
Speaker 1: respond to your your thing you know it will be
Speaker 1: a mystery. So um. Apparently pain is the most common
Speaker 1: reason that people, um go seek medical attention. But when
Speaker 1: they go seek medical attention, as we talked about in
Speaker 1: the pain Scales episode, the whole reason there is such
Speaker 1: a thing as a pain scale is because it's a
Speaker 1: fully subjective experience and it's really difficult to describe. And
Speaker 1: it's taken medicine, like many, many years to get to
Speaker 1: a point where they tell the people their training, doctors
Speaker 1: and nurse practitioners and medical staff, like, if somebody tells
Speaker 1: you they're in pain, they're experiencing pain, you have to
Speaker 1: take them at their word. Um. And that's actually kind
Speaker 1: of a new development because there are plenty of times
Speaker 1: when it appears that there's absolutely nothing wrong and that
Speaker 1: the person shouldn't be in pain. And for years doctors
Speaker 1: just kind of treated people like like that like kooks
Speaker 1: and didn't believe them, which was very sad. And now
Speaker 1: we're finally figuring out there's situations where you can be
Speaker 1: experiencing pain even though there's no reason for you to
Speaker 1: be experiencing pain, which really underscores just how subjective it is.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. In three, there was an actual definition
Speaker 1: for pain that was introduced that has a couple of
Speaker 1: really important caveats that will kind of play out through
Speaker 1: this episode. Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional experience.
Speaker 1: There's the first caveat associated with actual or potential tissue
Speaker 1: damage or described in terms of such damage, which is
Speaker 1: a big caveat there, because you can walk into a
Speaker 1: doctor's office and say, I've got some big time tissue damage. Doc,
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing big time pain, and they can look you
Speaker 1: over and be like, this guy didn't have any tissue
Speaker 1: damage at all. So that's in the actual definition of
Speaker 1: pain of pain. So I think that the reason they
Speaker 1: caveatted that was for the very simple reason that pain
Speaker 1: can be emotional. And I don't mean like real emotional pain.
Speaker 1: I mean a physical pain that is may be made
Speaker 1: worse by emotion or brought on by emotion, or that
Speaker 1: you're you know, you really don't have a pain, like
Speaker 1: you've got a chronic pain, let's say, but nothing's going
Speaker 1: on under the hood to cause it. Yeah, And like
Speaker 1: we've learned so much about pain since nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: that I saw that just this past July, um the
Speaker 1: International Association for the Study of Pain updated and revised
Speaker 1: their their definition. It's still basically the same, but they've
Speaker 1: included a lot of stuff that we talk we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about in this episode. Does it say pain
Speaker 1: whatever you say, dude, right yea, they said pain is uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is so far at least. Um. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of different types of pain, though actually not that many,
Speaker 1: but there's a few. Acute pain, which is very short lasting.
Speaker 1: If you if you put your finger on the burner
Speaker 1: of the stove or something like that, or um, slam
Speaker 1: it in a window, that's going to be an acute
Speaker 1: pain where you know it's really helpful, so you know
Speaker 1: your body is gonna say, wait a minute, that's super hot.
Speaker 1: Or by the way, dummy, you just put your finger
Speaker 1: in a window and you immediately have a reaction to
Speaker 1: stop that immediate acute thing from happening, even though the
Speaker 1: pain is gonna still be there. It's not like you
Speaker 1: slam your finger in the window, yank your thing away
Speaker 1: and shake it a little bit and it's gone. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: it can be depending on the level of pain, but
Speaker 1: it makes sense that it would still linger even in
Speaker 1: acute paint, which from what I can tell, is like
Speaker 1: the ideal version of pain. It's, like you said, it
Speaker 1: makes you stop doing whatever you're doing, but the fact
Speaker 1: that it still hangs around for another minute, it's almost
Speaker 1: like it's teaching you a lesson, like not only stop
Speaker 1: doing that, don't do that again. Yeah, and there's some
Speaker 1: overlap in these, by the way, So when we talk
Speaker 1: about the next one, no susceptive pain, this comes about
Speaker 1: from tissue damage, like real tissue damaged by like physical
Speaker 1: or a chemical agent. We're talking a chemical burn, or
Speaker 1: a trauma or a surgery. This can also include slamming
Speaker 1: that finger in the window. It can also include you
Speaker 1: worked out really hard the day before and you're really
Speaker 1: sore the next day. Yeah, as long as there's some
Speaker 1: sort of like mechanical reason or some sort of damage
Speaker 1: to tissue, or even temporary damage like a sore sore muscle.
Speaker 1: Um And it also includes malignant pain, which is cancer pain,
Speaker 1: which is where tumor starts growing in your tissue, impresses
Speaker 1: on nerves and blood vessels and create pain like that.
Speaker 1: And no, no susceptive pain is what most people think
Speaker 1: of when they think about pain. Um And it can
Speaker 1: be both acute and chronic. But I guess the best
Speaker 1: way to kind of differentiate no susceptive pain from the
Speaker 1: rest of it, there's actually something going on that is
Speaker 1: causing the pain signal to be created. Um And it,
Speaker 1: like I said, it can be short lasting or long lasting. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's different from a different type of pain, appropriately
Speaker 1: enough called neuropathic pain. Whereas no susceptive arise from arises
Speaker 1: from tissue damage, neuropathic arises from damage to the actual
Speaker 1: nerves themselves. Yeah. Like, uh, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember this story from almost a year ago. It was
Speaker 1: last October when I hit my shin on my bed
Speaker 1: so hard that water started leaking out of my eyes.
Speaker 1: I wasn't crying, it was just literally water coming out
Speaker 1: of my eyes. And I've never felt pain like that before.
Speaker 1: And it was clearly some kind of literal nerve damage
Speaker 1: because for three or four months, I had like a
Speaker 1: three uh three inch by three inch square on my
Speaker 1: shin that was completely numb. And uh, it's it's the
Speaker 1: worst pain, like physical pain I've ever felt in my life.
Speaker 1: They I mean, that would definitely qualifies neuropathic pain. You
Speaker 1: clearly messed up the nerves in that little area. UM,
Speaker 1: and you're lucky that it only lasted three months, because
Speaker 1: apparently neuropathic pain, which can include everything from hitting your
Speaker 1: shin to banging your funny bone, your elbow UM two
Speaker 1: things like sciatica or even multiple sclerosis. Anytime the neurons
Speaker 1: in your nerve fibers are are damaged. UM, that's neuropathic pain,
Speaker 1: and it can last. It can very easily translate from
Speaker 1: acute pain over to chronic pain, which is pain that
Speaker 1: last six months or longer um, which can itself be
Speaker 1: no susceptive or neuropathic. Uh. It can also, unfortunately be psychogenic.
Speaker 1: Chronic pain can be, which is where you have lasting, uh,
Speaker 1: sustained pain over six months or longer um for no
Speaker 1: good reason whatsoever. Yeah, and this is you know, it
Speaker 1: gets really sort of murky and confusing. Here. We are
Speaker 1: not saying that chronic pain is all in your head,
Speaker 1: but we're saying that in some cases that there there
Speaker 1: is no reason behind you continuing to feel chronic pain.
Speaker 1: But so many people suffer from chronic pain. I think
Speaker 1: roughly it kind of varies, you know, depending on the year.
Speaker 1: But somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty adult Americans suffer
Speaker 1: chronic pain every single year. Um, And it's when you
Speaker 1: hear people talk about that, like, uh, I just feel
Speaker 1: bad for him. I can't imagine what it's like to
Speaker 1: walk around in constant pain, and it's probably even more
Speaker 1: frustrating when a doctor can't trace it to a thing like, hey,
Speaker 1: we fixed that. It shouldn't be hurting anymore, right, especially
Speaker 1: if they're being patronizing and treating you like your cook, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a bad doctor. You should not go. Sure, But again,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I feel like people with fibromyalgia or
Speaker 1: chronic fatigue. I don't know if you experience pain with
Speaker 1: chronic fatigue, but have long been treated like their nuts,
Speaker 1: like it's all in their heads, just because you know,
Speaker 1: science has not been able to identify exactly what the
Speaker 1: deal is. Yeah, I would say, if your doctor is
Speaker 1: like that, go to a doctor with a little better
Speaker 1: bedside manner. At least they might be saying the same thing.
Speaker 1: But they would should treat you with respect. And if
Speaker 1: if they're wearing oversized clown shoes, so much the better.
Speaker 1: That's usually it did give way for a great doctor,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, I don't think we said that, uh,
Speaker 1: we we talked about no susceptive pain, but no susception
Speaker 1: is taken from the Latin word for hurt, and um
Speaker 1: pain is its own thing like pain perception. We're talking
Speaker 1: about what's going on with the central nervous system, uh
Speaker 1: the peripheral central nervous system as well, and how it
Speaker 1: processes this information is really uh interesting and still cloudy
Speaker 1: because the brain is involved. And we've done dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of podcasts that involved the brain, and at some
Speaker 1: point during all of them we usually say something like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of their best guess right now, because
Speaker 1: the brain is still such a mystery. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: made like advances by leaps and bounds since the sixties
Speaker 1: when we kind of started to change our understanding of
Speaker 1: pain and definitely refining it. But one of the things
Speaker 1: we figured out is that no susception itself is separate
Speaker 1: from the experience of pain. It's like the body giving
Speaker 1: the brain information about something that's going on with your
Speaker 1: body right now, but it's not pain itself. Pain is
Speaker 1: the brain responding to that information, and so no susception,
Speaker 1: as we'll see, is kind of this process where your
Speaker 1: body um detects some sort of noxious stimuli UH, and
Speaker 1: the no susceptors your specific kind of UM little sense
Speaker 1: receptors that are tuned to pain. As we'll talk about UM.
Speaker 1: They send a signal to your brain saying, hey, there's
Speaker 1: something going on here, and then in your brain, your
Speaker 1: your brain starts sort through the whole thing and decides
Speaker 1: how to respond. So no susception and pain they're very
Speaker 1: much intertwined, but they're definitely different things, and we've actually
Speaker 1: seen that one can exist without the other. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they've done studies that UM and I. I mean
Speaker 1: we had to have talked about this and other people
Speaker 1: that can't feel pain UM congenital analgesia. I don't remember
Speaker 1: ever saying those words before. I think we had to
Speaker 1: have There's no way, although knowing us, it's possible we
Speaker 1: walked around that one. Well maybe so. But there are studies,
Speaker 1: including ones on that people who can't feel pain, that
Speaker 1: have shown that no susception can occur without the experience
Speaker 1: of pain, and UM pain can be experienced with the
Speaker 1: absence of no susception. So it's sort of a two
Speaker 1: way street. Yeah, that's like that psychogenic pain where you
Speaker 1: there's no reason for you to be feeling that pain
Speaker 1: right then, right, yeah, And because it's the brain, it's
Speaker 1: um and you put in here it's like it sounds funny,
Speaker 1: but your brain is what's feeling the pain. Like when
Speaker 1: you smash that hand in a window. Um, you might
Speaker 1: think that your hand feeling the pain, but technically it's
Speaker 1: your brain, if that makes sense. Yeah, or even that
Speaker 1: like you're you're that hand that window smashing your hand
Speaker 1: set off a specific unique kind of um uh signal
Speaker 1: that that transmits a pain signal directly your brain. Your
Speaker 1: brain experiences the pain. That's just not quite right. That's
Speaker 1: actually Renee des cartes interpretation of it, and can so well.
Speaker 1: Considering he was working in the first half of the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, he wasn't that far off the mark, especially
Speaker 1: considering that before him the Greeks had thought up basically
Speaker 1: up to day car, everyone had thought, starting with the Greeks,
Speaker 1: that pain was like a spirit intrusion, it was like
Speaker 1: something external at all. And in fact, our word pain
Speaker 1: comes from uh pena like subpoena, which means penalty. So
Speaker 1: this like pain was considered a punishment from the gods
Speaker 1: um And Dave Carr was like, no, I think this
Speaker 1: is an internal process, and he had like the broad
Speaker 1: strokes of it. It's just that he didn't have the
Speaker 1: details that we have now today. Yeah, he kind of
Speaker 1: got well he got one half of it pretty right. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mentioned it was a two way street. It's
Speaker 1: a two way street in a lot of ways. Because
Speaker 1: what we've learned since decart is that we do have
Speaker 1: pain signals that go up from nerves in the body
Speaker 1: to the brain to say hey, I'm hurt. Those are
Speaker 1: called ascending signals. But then we also have another signal
Speaker 1: going I'm just gonna call it downstream for lack of
Speaker 1: a better term, descending signals that come from the brain
Speaker 1: that can kind of mute the pain or turn off
Speaker 1: the pain signals. And that's you know, as we'll see
Speaker 1: later when it comes to medication and stuff. It's sort
Speaker 1: of managing that way, like whatever traffic light is on
Speaker 1: that two way street. Yeah, well that was like a
Speaker 1: huge thing, Chuck, like to figure out that. Wait a minute, Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, the experience of pain is totally in
Speaker 1: the in the brain. Right, your hand itself isn't actually hurting.
Speaker 1: Your brain is hurt is what hurts. It just feels
Speaker 1: like it's coming from your hand. And then secondly, the
Speaker 1: idea that your brain can influence this the experience of pain,
Speaker 1: that was just revolutionary. And so as a result, we've
Speaker 1: come to kind of see pain as the brain. There's
Speaker 1: a neuroscentist name vs. Rama Shan Droton who's just brilliant
Speaker 1: and he um, he said that pain. This is paraphrasing him.
Speaker 1: He said that pain is the brain's opinion of the
Speaker 1: current state of your health. You got no pain, It's
Speaker 1: all good. You've got pain. Your brain is interpreting there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with like your hand or your leg, or
Speaker 1: your guts or something like that. And it's just an opinion.
Speaker 1: And the opinion can be gotten wrong too. Well, you
Speaker 1: know what they say about opinions. Yeah, everybody's got an
Speaker 1: elbow of them. All right, I think we should take
Speaker 1: a break and we're gonna come back and dive into
Speaker 1: some hard science right after this. Alrighty, so your brain
Speaker 1: has an opinion about the current state of your health. Um,
Speaker 1: we're still at the stage where we're sort of testing
Speaker 1: out how pain is generated and how we experience it.
Speaker 1: But what we kind of think right now is what
Speaker 1: we mentioned a little bit earlier is that some of
Speaker 1: the sense receptors located on the nerve endings are really
Speaker 1: finely tuned two different kinds of UM, different kinds of pain,
Speaker 1: but really tuned to different kinds of thing that might
Speaker 1: cause pain, like a hot stove or a needle going
Speaker 1: to your arm. Yeah. And you can pretty much divide
Speaker 1: them into three categories. Mechanical which is pulling, stretching, tearing, cutting, chemical,
Speaker 1: which say like exposure to acid or something, and then
Speaker 1: thermal like like heat or cold. Um. And the idea
Speaker 1: that these no susceptors are capable of being triggered by
Speaker 1: exposure to those kind of stimuli from the external world,
Speaker 1: that that is what kicks off the no susception process. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they, uh, they're all very different and they have
Speaker 1: different ways of communicating with the brain. Um. There are
Speaker 1: some that do things really really fast. Uh. These U
Speaker 1: there are some called a fibers. They have a little
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a little express train instead of
Speaker 1: having to make stops along the way, has a fatty
Speaker 1: mile in sheath that's going to insulate the electro conduction
Speaker 1: basically on the wire and it really just zaps it.
Speaker 1: They're really really fast not a lot of information losses
Speaker 1: going on. And that's like that first really intense pain
Speaker 1: you feel when you burn your hand or when you
Speaker 1: slam it into the window. Is that's kind of what's
Speaker 1: going on with the A fibers, right, And then you've
Speaker 1: got sea fibers, which aren't insulated and they are slower conducting,
Speaker 1: but they also have a bunch of they recruit a
Speaker 1: bunch of them to conduct signals from different parts of
Speaker 1: different areas um to the brain to say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is this is actually pretty pretty problematic. We got a
Speaker 1: real thing going on here. And they account for the
Speaker 1: follow up like usually burning, throbbing kind of sensation that
Speaker 1: can be followed by that first like bolt of pain
Speaker 1: that the A fibers deliver, and then that's from the
Speaker 1: actual like like uh no susceptors. There's other stuff that
Speaker 1: spens to like if you cut open your hand, those
Speaker 1: damage cells you know, spill their guts and so like
Speaker 1: potassium and glutamate and substance peace starch start like change
Speaker 1: start firing off, like other neurons in the area um
Speaker 1: you might have an inflammatory response, so things like histamine
Speaker 1: show up and they start setting off other nerve fibers too,
Speaker 1: So it's more than just the you know, the cut hand. No,
Speaker 1: susceptor is telling the brain that something's happening. Like a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different responses from the area are going
Speaker 1: to arrive at the brain and produce this really complex,
Speaker 1: rich message saying here's generally what's going on, and here's
Speaker 1: how bad it is. You ever had a bad burn? Yes, man,
Speaker 1: that's the worst. They are pretty bad. I don't even
Speaker 1: remember what happened, but um, I definitely have burned myself
Speaker 1: pretty bad. You may has this same spot on her
Speaker 1: hand that she gets in like the confection of it.
Speaker 1: Like basically every time it heals, she just re upset again.
Speaker 1: She's always got this little little thing on like I
Speaker 1: think it's her pinky knuckle on her right hand, and
Speaker 1: she always like hits the same spot on the yep.
Speaker 1: Oh man, every time you get that lady a glove
Speaker 1: a hot myth. Yeah, I think by now it's just
Speaker 1: so callous that she is dead. She fights sailors with
Speaker 1: it these days. Yeah, those burns really linger. And that's
Speaker 1: like every time I hear someone or see somebody that
Speaker 1: has has you know, had been in a fire and
Speaker 1: had really really bad burns over a lot of their body.
Speaker 1: I just I can't imagine the lingering pain that they
Speaker 1: go through. I know we've talked about this on some
Speaker 1: episode before, but uh, just those burns that it seems
Speaker 1: like they hurt forever. Yeah, I mean, you've got exposed
Speaker 1: nerves fibers to just the air, which you know, as
Speaker 1: we'll also see, when you undergo a particularly brilliant experience
Speaker 1: of acute pain, it can be so thorough and it's
Speaker 1: energizing of your nerves that they actually become sense of tized,
Speaker 1: so like they become more sensitive than they would have
Speaker 1: before that, which is actually also a problem with with
Speaker 1: chronic pain too. But if you if you experience burns
Speaker 1: like that deep over all of your body, not only
Speaker 1: are you going through the normal pain, you're probably more
Speaker 1: sensitive now to normal stuff like air blowing on your
Speaker 1: exposed nerves than you wouldn't otherwise, and that just makes
Speaker 1: it that much worse. Yeah. And then some things that
Speaker 1: you might think really hurt don't hurt. Um, like cuts,
Speaker 1: I've had cuts before that don't hurt. They might freak
Speaker 1: you out, uh to look at it and to see,
Speaker 1: you know, like your skin exposed and some people are
Speaker 1: really freaked out by the blood. Um, I've had other
Speaker 1: people I know I've never broken bones that have had
Speaker 1: some pretty gnarly injuries like that. That said, it didn't
Speaker 1: really hurt that much. Yeah, they're walking around like a skeleton.
Speaker 1: You hang on the door with their arms just flopping
Speaker 1: back and forth. It's really interesting how it all works.
Speaker 1: But it really underscores, you know, how the brain can
Speaker 1: get its opinion um of what's wrong with the body
Speaker 1: based on the pain information wrong sometimes a lot of times,
Speaker 1: like think about a hangnail. Hangnail is no threat whatsoever
Speaker 1: to your survival, but those things hurt. Or a paper cut.
Speaker 1: No one's going to die from a paper cut, but
Speaker 1: it really really hurts too. Um. It can be overblown,
Speaker 1: it can be underblown, but it really goes to show
Speaker 1: like it's the brain taking all this different information together
Speaker 1: and saying, here's how bad I think this is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool and painful. Uh. So let's say you
Speaker 1: get hurt. Let's say you you slam your your hand
Speaker 1: in the window like I was talking about, which I
Speaker 1: think has happened. I don't know why I keep going
Speaker 1: to that got your worst fear. I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it's better not your worst fear.
Speaker 1: That is not that bad. That'd be hard. It's a
Speaker 1: lot easier to shut your hand in a car door
Speaker 1: than a window. But O, man, that hurts either way. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I had a knock wood. That hasn't happened to me
Speaker 1: in a long time. Yeah. Every time my daughter shuts
Speaker 1: the door, which I tried to let her do whatever
Speaker 1: she can on her own, I'm always just like, don't
Speaker 1: do it. Do you put ovenmits her hands first? No? No,
Speaker 1: nanny stayed at our house. Uh. So you you get
Speaker 1: hurt on your hand, Let's say, Um, the signal that
Speaker 1: is gonna travel it travels through the into the gray
Speaker 1: matter of your spinal cord, and there are gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of different connections made with the spinal neurons there,
Speaker 1: and it's going to cover a broad area of the body,
Speaker 1: which is why sometimes if you get hurt, um, especially
Speaker 1: if it's like an internal injury, you don't know exactly
Speaker 1: where the pain's coming from. You might tell your doctor
Speaker 1: you just might rub around your whole torso when in
Speaker 1: fact what's actually hurt is a fairly small area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it could be like a completely different part of
Speaker 1: your your body or kind of near. It's called referred pain,
Speaker 1: like if you're having a heart attack, usually feel pain
Speaker 1: in your arm. Yeah. If you have brain freeze, that's
Speaker 1: your blood vessels on the roof of your mouth expanding
Speaker 1: because they're cold. But you feel it unlike your forehead
Speaker 1: really terribly, which doesn't make any sense. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's from those the nerve or the sea fiber
Speaker 1: information where it makes it tough to also figure out
Speaker 1: where it's coming from. Have you ever been to a cardiologist? No,
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm going to one this week. Man. I
Speaker 1: had I've known two people in the past like a
Speaker 1: month that have dropped dead that are like my age.
Speaker 1: What uh. One friend of mine from college had been
Speaker 1: experiencing chess pains and he went to drove drove himself
Speaker 1: to the hospital like collapse and died on the way
Speaker 1: into the hospital. Just terrible. And I haven't been out
Speaker 1: of touch since college, but it really hit me hard
Speaker 1: to where I was like, you know what, I I
Speaker 1: want to go, like just see what's going on in
Speaker 1: there and get some preventative or not. Preventative, but just
Speaker 1: some proactive tests done. Uh, you know where they see
Speaker 1: how your arteries are doing. Because I've got cholesterol issues
Speaker 1: because of my my family history and stuff, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be one of those things where they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that you know you were clogged this
Speaker 1: whole time. So I don't I don't care what they say.
Speaker 1: I'm going to demand those tests. Yeah. I think you
Speaker 1: probably will have to pay for them out of pocket,
Speaker 1: but that's not the end of the world. If, like
Speaker 1: you have, you have concerns about it, no want of
Speaker 1: genuine concerns, cardiologists might actually go ahead and prescribe it anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't have concerns in that I have chest pains
Speaker 1: or anything, but but if you have a family history,
Speaker 1: they may. Yeah, I just I want to know what's
Speaker 1: going on. I'll I think that's great. And actually it's
Speaker 1: funny like you me had suggested we do something like
Speaker 1: that too, So maybe we'll see you at the cardiologists office. Well,
Speaker 1: I think for women you can go get heart screenings
Speaker 1: for women, um, very easily. Uh. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's because I thought it was for both and
Speaker 1: I talked to the lady on the phone. She said, O,
Speaker 1: and then that's only for women. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: because women are less likely to talk to doctors about
Speaker 1: their heart because I think it's maybe generally thought of
Speaker 1: as something that men experience more. Yeah, I guess now
Speaker 1: that you say that, it does seem like more of
Speaker 1: a man. So I think they're trying to be proactive
Speaker 1: and saying like, hey, women, you need to think about
Speaker 1: this stuff too, so we'll offer it's like a hundred
Speaker 1: dollar heart screening or something like that. Gosh, is there
Speaker 1: anything socialized medicine can't do? So, uh, we were talking
Speaker 1: about those first um, those first set of spinal neurons.
Speaker 1: Then you have secondary neurons that are going to send
Speaker 1: their signals up through the white matter of the spinal cord.
Speaker 1: And this is an expressway where all the traffic from
Speaker 1: all of these lower segments just just speed up the
Speaker 1: spinal cord. Yeah yeah, which is you know, normal for
Speaker 1: any kind of sensory information. But um, the pain, the
Speaker 1: pain information follows the same super highway and it goes
Speaker 1: through your brain stem, your medula, and then it synapses
Speaker 1: again onto a third set of neurons. Um in your thalamus,
Speaker 1: which is your brain's relay center, and then from there
Speaker 1: things start to get kind of market. It goes out
Speaker 1: to different parts of the brain, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: pain in the brain in a second, but one thing
Speaker 1: that it does it was helpful for me to imagine
Speaker 1: pain a pain signal as like a pinball when when
Speaker 1: you hit it with the flippers, say that's like you're
Speaker 1: you cutting your hand. That pinball goes up and it's
Speaker 1: going up to the top of the pinball machine. But
Speaker 1: on the way, it goes through all these other things,
Speaker 1: like these gates that it flips around three and sixty
Speaker 1: degrees a bunch of time. Imagine that it's, you know,
Speaker 1: doing that in your in your brain stem, or in
Speaker 1: the gray matter of your spinal cord. It's going through
Speaker 1: all these different things, and as it does on its
Speaker 1: way to that final destination of the brain's somato sensory cortex,
Speaker 1: it can have effects on the way to Like if
Speaker 1: it's bad enough, it may enter what's called a spinal
Speaker 1: reflex loop, where that pain signal doesn't even make it
Speaker 1: to the brain before part of it gets redirected back
Speaker 1: down to say, your hand to make your hand jerk
Speaker 1: away from that hot stove before it even hit your brain.
Speaker 1: Literally before your brain even knows that there's pain going on.
Speaker 1: You're you have a signal going down to your arm
Speaker 1: to say, move that move that hand, dummy. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if you think about burning your hand, the burn, I
Speaker 1: mean it's very fast and very fast succession. The actual
Speaker 1: burn pain burn happens after you've jerked your hand away. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like I said, it's pretty lickety split, but you
Speaker 1: jerk that hand away. It's not like you keep it
Speaker 1: there and you're like, oh my goodness, I feel pain
Speaker 1: on my hand. Oh my lord, it's got fire on it.
Speaker 1: I should probably move it eventually. Another thing that can
Speaker 1: happen is pain signals can set off your fight or
Speaker 1: flight pathways as it's going through the medulla. It's been
Speaker 1: a long time since we talked about or fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been so long. They added a third one freeze. Ye.
Speaker 1: It's like an old friend coming back to visit, but
Speaker 1: bringing a new obnoxious friend with it. Yeah. So um,
Speaker 1: it could set that off through the medulla. And you
Speaker 1: know what happens there is you're gonna your heart rate
Speaker 1: is gonna go up. Your blood pressure is gonna shoot up.
Speaker 1: You're gonna start sweating if you're me rapid breathing, and
Speaker 1: it really can. Um, it really depends on the intensity
Speaker 1: of the pain, but it can definitely set off that
Speaker 1: fight or flight or I guess freeze. And again, all
Speaker 1: this is before it even gets to the brain. And
Speaker 1: then finally when I, like I said, when it does
Speaker 1: get to the brain, we're not quite sure what happens there.
Speaker 1: We know from observations that the brain is definitely involved.
Speaker 1: And um, one of the ways that we know this
Speaker 1: is because, um, you will move your hands. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: not an immediate reaction, but sometimes it's a little later.
Speaker 1: So clearly some of those signals get sent to the
Speaker 1: motor cortex to say, Okay, get the hand out of there. Um.
Speaker 1: But we also can tell from things like the fact
Speaker 1: that if you consciously distract yourself from thinking about the
Speaker 1: pain with something else, like do you remember how um,
Speaker 1: Edward Norton in Fight Club when he had that lie
Speaker 1: on his on the on his hand, he kept trying
Speaker 1: to think of like a snow covered like forest or something.
Speaker 1: He went to his his happy animal I think was
Speaker 1: a penguin. That's right, that's right. He started to try
Speaker 1: to concentrate on that and that it didn't work then,
Speaker 1: but it could have worked depending on what other kind
Speaker 1: of tissue damage was going on. And it really kind
Speaker 1: of underscores the fact that if you think about something else,
Speaker 1: your pain may decrease. Well, if the brain has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with pain or controlling pain, then that wouldn't
Speaker 1: happen at all. And so observations like that and some
Speaker 1: other ones show us that, Okay, the brain is definitely
Speaker 1: involved in this in some way, shape or form, and
Speaker 1: pain is not just the reception of um a pain
Speaker 1: signal coming from the lower parts of the body up
Speaker 1: to the brain. But there's also a reciprocal thing, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, where the brain descends um or, there's
Speaker 1: descending pathways that the brain uses to say, Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: let's just all chill out down there, Okay, let me
Speaker 1: figure this out. Everybody, just shut up, shut up. I
Speaker 1: can't think when you're all screaming at me. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: as those signals are on the way down, there might
Speaker 1: be those uh, ascending nerve signals going up right, and
Speaker 1: those descending signals could overpower and say hold on, you
Speaker 1: stop right there, buddy, I'm trying to calm this person down.
Speaker 1: You just you just stay put, right, And so there's um,
Speaker 1: there's other things that that we figured out that can
Speaker 1: actually influence your experience of pain. Like to say that
Speaker 1: it's subjective is just no joke. There's probably no experience
Speaker 1: more subjective than the experience of pain. And there's all
Speaker 1: these different factors that are involved that will have an
Speaker 1: impact on how much or how little pain you experience.
Speaker 1: You know. I think improv comedy is the first that's right,
Speaker 1: man to see good improv is just it's just so rare,
Speaker 1: but it's so good when it is good. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've seen a handful in my life that just blew
Speaker 1: me away, and I've seen a bunch more that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's tough to get through. It's like horror movies, Like
Speaker 1: a truly great horror movie is really tough to beat.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of really bad horror movies out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of good ones these days, Thoughnas what you
Speaker 1: got well, I mean in the past five or six years,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, it follows and the and Hereditary, and
Speaker 1: I think there's been a bunch of new horror masters
Speaker 1: So now, this was not a horror movie, but I
Speaker 1: want to shout out Um and Nola Holmes on Netflix.
Speaker 1: Have you seen it? It's a coming of age movie
Speaker 1: about Sherlock Holmes's younger sister. Interesting and it's super cute,
Speaker 1: but it's also really smart, like very smart, and it
Speaker 1: takes the takes it for granted that the viewers smart
Speaker 1: and paying attention. It's a really great, great movie, great movie.
Speaker 1: You have to check that out. It's um Millie Bobby
Speaker 1: Brown as Nola Homes just about She's about as charming
Speaker 1: as they come. She's wonderful. So yeah, not a horror movie,
Speaker 1: but definitely worth watching regardless. Is that based on any
Speaker 1: uh literature or anything or did they just say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: what if he had a little sister. I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about it, but I think it's the ladder of the two,
Speaker 1: which makes it all the more amazing because they did
Speaker 1: such a great job of capturing that whole um, that
Speaker 1: whole world. Very cool. Yeah, where should we take a break? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why not? Let's let's take a break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and talk about a few of the factors that
Speaker 1: influence your experience of pain. So, um, we're saying before
Speaker 1: we started talking about in Nola Holmes and horror movies,
Speaker 1: that there's like a lot of different things that will
Speaker 1: influence an individual's experience of pain. Um. And it has
Speaker 1: to do with not just you biologically, but weirdly also
Speaker 1: you sociologic le too. Yeah, and this first one um
Speaker 1: age is to me a little counterintuitive. Um. In some ways,
Speaker 1: your you know, as you age, your brain circuitry is
Speaker 1: gonna it's just gonna degenerate a little bit. That's just
Speaker 1: that's sad fact of the matter. And if you are
Speaker 1: one of our seniors, and if you're a senior that's listening. Hello,
Speaker 1: got an email from a lovely eight year old lady
Speaker 1: the other day that just warmed my heart. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: she was great. She was great. So, um, if you
Speaker 1: are one of our senior listeners and you, um, you
Speaker 1: might have a lower pain threshold and more problems dealing
Speaker 1: with pain. Um. This seemed a little counterintuitive because I
Speaker 1: could also see a case where, uh, the neurons don't
Speaker 1: fire in the correct way, such that you could be
Speaker 1: feeling something painful and not really realize it. So the
Speaker 1: way I took it was a little different that it
Speaker 1: was almost like you know how when you form a
Speaker 1: habit or a memory or something, it's because the neural
Speaker 1: connection has gone over again and again. So like that
Speaker 1: pathways is kind of blazed a little more clearly. My
Speaker 1: interpretation was that the same can be true with pain,
Speaker 1: to where once you fire a few times are over
Speaker 1: and over again, it becomes easier to conduct that pain
Speaker 1: signal more efficiently, and so that would account for sensitization.
Speaker 1: That's how I took it. You know, hey, I'm no
Speaker 1: vs rama sham drawn. Uh. There's also gender, and because
Speaker 1: we're talking about medical research, they are basically still saying
Speaker 1: men and women, and they're not doing research along the
Speaker 1: gender spectrum. So having said that, research shows that women
Speaker 1: have a higher sensitivity to pain than men. Uh, could
Speaker 1: be maybe physic psychosocial stuff at work, because you know,
Speaker 1: men are supposed to not show their pain or not
Speaker 1: report pain or just suck it up. Dude. Uh, there
Speaker 1: could be that at work. It also could be sex
Speaker 1: linked genetic traits or hormonal changes that might change that
Speaker 1: pain perception, right, or even the culture you're raised in,
Speaker 1: like um women in Uganda, I read are expected to
Speaker 1: be stoic in the face of pain. Um, whereas men
Speaker 1: in Ukraine are expected to not h experience pain at
Speaker 1: all or show any kind of pain whatsoever. Um. So
Speaker 1: like the idea that culture can affect your interpretation or
Speaker 1: how you experience pain is kind of weird if you
Speaker 1: think about it. It's also weird because I know many
Speaker 1: many women who would say, are you kidding me? My
Speaker 1: husband is the biggest whiny baby every time he gets sick. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I generally suck it up as the wife, So
Speaker 1: you gandon and so you gandon. There's also memory, like
Speaker 1: if you've experienced pain before, your memory of going through
Speaker 1: that pain can impact how you experience it a follow
Speaker 1: up time too. Yeah, and for both ways. Like I
Speaker 1: used to be really, really really scared of needles, and
Speaker 1: I think that was because I went a long time
Speaker 1: without getting shots. Um. I think when you know, when
Speaker 1: I was younger and in college, like I wasn't giving
Speaker 1: blood like I should, and I wasn't getting flu shot
Speaker 1: it's like I should. But now that I'm a real
Speaker 1: sentient adult and responsible adult, I have needles in me
Speaker 1: all the time, and it's I'm not They don't really
Speaker 1: hurt that bad anymore. So when I go back I
Speaker 1: get that initial fear of the needle because I've always
Speaker 1: had it, But then my brain tells me, hey, Chuck,
Speaker 1: it's not that bad, remember do you just just suck
Speaker 1: it up and get the shot. My my sister in
Speaker 1: law is like a genuine shout no and run out
Speaker 1: of the room, like, yeah, needle Phobe, that's a great
Speaker 1: band name. Oh my god, that's the best band name
Speaker 1: in years, Chuck. What kind of band is that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Needle Phobe is clearly some sort of metal, maybe new
Speaker 1: metal if it were going to be ruined. But there's
Speaker 1: definitely something, and there may be along the lines of
Speaker 1: like Queens Rich or something. Yeah, I could see that,
Speaker 1: or maybe even like horror metal. Oh yeah, like that
Speaker 1: Norwegian stuff. Sure, Okay, so it's about to get weirder, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about needles. If you look at a
Speaker 1: needle injected into your arm, it hurts more than if
Speaker 1: you're not looking. Even if you're thinking about the needle
Speaker 1: injecting into your arm being injected in your arm, just
Speaker 1: not looking at it makes it hurt less, studies have shown,
Speaker 1: which is weird, but in a sense it also makes
Speaker 1: sense because you're being provided with additional information about that
Speaker 1: through your eyes, so your brain has more information than
Speaker 1: it otherwise would have, which can actually make it hurt more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know I've mentioned this, I still gotta look. Um.
Speaker 1: I used to request a mirror to look at dental
Speaker 1: work as it was going on. I don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: I try and just check out, but I always have
Speaker 1: to look at the needle. There's no way. Yeah. Same here,
Speaker 1: I'm like, do it slower. You're not a needle fobe,
Speaker 1: You're a needle uh whatever. The opposite is file a
Speaker 1: needle file. Um. So. And then there's emotions too, and
Speaker 1: not just you know, like you were saying earlier, there's something.
Speaker 1: There's a different thing psychic pain. Where you are your
Speaker 1: emotions are so overwrought that you actually feel physically uncomfortable
Speaker 1: or hurt from it. That's different. Your emotions can actually
Speaker 1: affect physical pain as well. Yeah, and back when we
Speaker 1: were trying to understand and we're still trying to understand this,
Speaker 1: but um, why emotions and stuff might influence pain. In
Speaker 1: the sixties, of course, when all this kind of cool
Speaker 1: research was going on, there were a couple of dudes
Speaker 1: named Ronald mel Zack and Patrick Wall, who threw up
Speaker 1: a proposal about a gating mechanism existing among the connections
Speaker 1: in the body sensory pathways that can help determine how
Speaker 1: you're gonna feel pain and how that works with the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because so there's the ascending painful pathways and then the
Speaker 1: descending let's all just mellow out pathways. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if we knew that before um Melzack and Wall,
Speaker 1: or if we know it as a result to them,
Speaker 1: But the current general understanding of pain is this gate
Speaker 1: control theory, where this there's stimulation of these pathways going
Speaker 1: up to the brain and they have to be of
Speaker 1: like a certain amount to overcome an inhibitory neuron. And
Speaker 1: so if you I just like press you know, my arm,
Speaker 1: I'm sending somato sensory information through those same pain pathways,
Speaker 1: but that the inhibitory neuron that keeps those the pain
Speaker 1: projector neurons from firing, are not overcome. But if I,
Speaker 1: if I, you know, took a butcher knife and cut
Speaker 1: that same part of my arm, they would be overcome.
Speaker 1: The inhibitory neuron would basically be turned off by the
Speaker 1: signal the intensity of the signal, and that projector neuron
Speaker 1: would fire, and now our brains would have that pain signal, saying,
Speaker 1: in that case, the gate is fully open for business.
Speaker 1: And when otherwise, when there's no pain, no no sensory information,
Speaker 1: the gates closed, or if it's just normal somatosensory information,
Speaker 1: the gates still closed. It's just when it's that that
Speaker 1: intensity of the pain information that the gate flies open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is interesting because it doesn't explain everything, but
Speaker 1: it does explain like when you um, like if you
Speaker 1: smash your thumb with a hammer, and your reaction is
Speaker 1: to go and shake your hand really hard or too
Speaker 1: or to suck on it. Maybe if you smash your
Speaker 1: finger with a hammer. It seems like a weird thing
Speaker 1: to do. I know it is, but it works. It does.
Speaker 1: That stimulates your normal somatosensory input to those projector neurons,
Speaker 1: and that's going to help override the projection neurons that
Speaker 1: uh and you know, basically kind of close that gate down. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now that you understand the gate theory of pain,
Speaker 1: and this is the general understanding among Western science medicine
Speaker 1: of pain. This is pretty much the common knowledge. Now
Speaker 1: you can understand how it can go wrong, and so
Speaker 1: they think that this also explain how the how you
Speaker 1: can experience psychogenic pain where people have fibro mayalgia or
Speaker 1: chronic pelvic pain, or tenitis or t mj or um
Speaker 1: chronic back pain when there's no reason whatsoever for them
Speaker 1: to experience this. The Um the really great author in
Speaker 1: Surgeon a Tool go on Day, I believe he rights
Speaker 1: for The New Yorker. He's also he writes some books
Speaker 1: as well. He's one of one of the best writers
Speaker 1: out there right now, and he's also a very accomplished surgeon.
Speaker 1: And he he likens that situation to a faulty car sensor,
Speaker 1: where if you have a sensor on your dashboard coming
Speaker 1: on saying like, hey you got an engine problem, and
Speaker 1: you go to the mechanic and the mechanics like you
Speaker 1: don't have an engine problem. Eventually they're going to figure
Speaker 1: out that the problems with the sensor itself, and they
Speaker 1: think that this is because of this gate being opened.
Speaker 1: The sensor um is open, even though there's nothing tripping it. Um,
Speaker 1: that that is the problem, that that is what it
Speaker 1: counts for psychogenic pain. Very interesting and it's gonna make sense, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to managing pain. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of different routes you can go, UM, depending
Speaker 1: on what your doctor might recommend, depending on what you
Speaker 1: as a human, UM, what what road you want to
Speaker 1: go down? Uh, and these very uh and we'll you know,
Speaker 1: we'll get into these, but these very from like over
Speaker 1: the counter medications to prescription medications to surgery, to go
Speaker 1: into a massage therapist or a uh an acupuncture specialist, acupuncturist.
Speaker 1: But as far as the medications go, you've got a
Speaker 1: couple of different kinds. UM. You've got your non opioid
Speaker 1: analgesic like this is a tail in all or in
Speaker 1: a lever or an advil or something like that, and
Speaker 1: it's going to act at the side of the pain. UM.
Speaker 1: When you have that damaged tissue, it releases enzymes that
Speaker 1: stimulate the pain receptors locally. And what these do is
Speaker 1: they interfere with those enzymes are going to reduce inflammation
Speaker 1: and hopefully reduce pain. Yeah, which is really interesting because
Speaker 1: that is your mind saying this pain is not nothing
Speaker 1: that my brain needs to worry about. I'm going to
Speaker 1: actually go to the site and cancel out those those
Speaker 1: pain signals where they're beginning, because I'm judging that they're
Speaker 1: not that important. Pretty cool, Yeah, it is cool, but
Speaker 1: these can have effects on the liver and kidneys if
Speaker 1: you use them a lot. So you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to, uh, you don't want to pop an advil
Speaker 1: every day if you have like back pain, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. And then there's opioids which, um they
Speaker 1: actually go to the gate um and they can close
Speaker 1: the gate on the one hand, and then they can
Speaker 1: also go to your brain and um excite in the
Speaker 1: descending pathways which will bind with like opioid receptors. And
Speaker 1: of course those are hugely addictive and have a huge
Speaker 1: um possibility of of overdose as well, but they do
Speaker 1: help treat pain a lot. Yeah, we should do one
Speaker 1: of opioids and the opioid epidemic. It's I agree. It's
Speaker 1: been one of the darker spots of the new era. Yes,
Speaker 1: the new era, I don't even know the last ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen years. That's what I call that. A new era.
Speaker 1: The modern era is what I meant. Uh, what else
Speaker 1: do we have there? Um, you can actually use medicines
Speaker 1: that aren't meant for treating pain to treat pain, like
Speaker 1: anti epileptic drugs, brand stuff, antidepressants, anesthetics. They all do
Speaker 1: things like they block can like nerve conduction in some
Speaker 1: specific area, and so they weren't Yeah, they weren't meant
Speaker 1: to be treated for or used for pain, but they
Speaker 1: actually can come in handy for things like chronic pain
Speaker 1: or neuropathic pain. Yeah. You can also have surgery is
Speaker 1: a kind of a last resort um if you have
Speaker 1: severe I've not had a couple of friends, actually you
Speaker 1: have had back surgery where let's say you have a
Speaker 1: herniated disk and that thing is compressing on a nerve.
Speaker 1: As a last resort, they can go in there and
Speaker 1: maybe remove a little bit of that disk that's hitting
Speaker 1: that nerve and relieve that pressure. Yeah, and from what
Speaker 1: I've seen, yes, that is meant to be a last resort.
Speaker 1: There's also like cord ectomies where they go in and
Speaker 1: say we're just gonna snip that gate so that it
Speaker 1: just doesn't function at all anymore and make you a
Speaker 1: super soldier. And then there's also alternative therapies and mental
Speaker 1: control techniques and these work of varying degrees um. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite alternative therapies. Is the TENS unit transcutaneous
Speaker 1: electrical nerve stimulation and it sends electrical impulses from the
Speaker 1: site of pain to base. It's basically like a defibrillator
Speaker 1: for your pain gate. It's saying your pain gate is
Speaker 1: is it's open, and it shouldn't be open. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna We're gonna send some nerve stimulation and the hopes
Speaker 1: that we can restart that inhibitory neuron and get it
Speaker 1: closing that pain gate, or and or we can make
Speaker 1: it all the way up to the brain and get
Speaker 1: the brains descending pathways kick started as well. Is that
Speaker 1: like when uh, like I had a back thing about
Speaker 1: five years ago where they gave me this electro stimulator
Speaker 1: thing that I put these little pads on the and
Speaker 1: there's like a little handheld thing about the size of
Speaker 1: a game boy that was connected to uh, not mine,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure they're all different kinds. But you could
Speaker 1: basically level the amount of sort of low level shock
Speaker 1: and uh when you turn that thing all the way up, man,
Speaker 1: it was it was pretty intense. Yeah, that's a TENS unit,
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, that's based on some
Speaker 1: really ancient thinking Apparently the pre Dynastic Egyptians from like
Speaker 1: five thousand years ago used electric catfish from the Nile
Speaker 1: for the same effect and impact. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know we mentioned going to the chiropractor,
Speaker 1: massage therapist. Um. Obviously they're hot compresses and cold compresses.
Speaker 1: There's acupuncture, Um, there is you know, relaxation and hypnosis.
Speaker 1: And we've already talked about distraction. If you want to
Speaker 1: know what you think about hypnosis, we did a pretty
Speaker 1: good episode on it a while back. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they are all sorts of mental ways because they've shown
Speaker 1: that that oh I'm blanking out what do you call
Speaker 1: the drugs that aren't real drugs? What are the sugar bills? Placebos? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that placebos have been shown to work sometimes with
Speaker 1: with limiting pain. Yeah yeah, And I mean you can
Speaker 1: trick the brain for sure into not feeling pain. Like
Speaker 1: Phantom limb treatment usually or sometimes involves a mirror where
Speaker 1: you put a mirror over the amputated limb that's experienced pain,
Speaker 1: and you move the other limb while you're looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror, so it looks like you're amputated limb is
Speaker 1: back and you're tricking your brain into being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's there, it's fine, I don't have to experience pain anymore.
Speaker 1: And it actually works. Yeah, but there's there's a you know,
Speaker 1: there's a threshold there, like you can mind over matter
Speaker 1: it to a certain degree. But um, as you say
Speaker 1: in the article, like your mind and your brain are
Speaker 1: two different things, so like you can't shut down that
Speaker 1: gateway just by thinking it away. No, And there's a
Speaker 1: real like push to to believe that over the last
Speaker 1: few decades. But it's just it's becoming clear you can
Speaker 1: impact it to some degree, but just not to to
Speaker 1: a full degree. Yeah, And I think the mind over
Speaker 1: matter is a person like the pain doesn't go away.
Speaker 1: You're just able to mentally overcome it such that you're
Speaker 1: not gonna either show it or let it get to
Speaker 1: you or let it affect you. Right, you have actually
Speaker 1: a lower stress response, and at the same time it
Speaker 1: also cuts down on suffering, which is different from the
Speaker 1: experience of pain. It's like associated with pain, and that's
Speaker 1: like like that whole y Me thing and that seems
Speaker 1: to be fixated on anticipating more pain in the immediate future.
Speaker 1: And people who are mindful and meditate can actually cut
Speaker 1: down and alleviate that suffering. So they experience pain, but
Speaker 1: it goes away a lot faster in their response to
Speaker 1: it is it nearly is pronounced, so it does have
Speaker 1: an effect. You know, Chuck, this is a good one
Speaker 1: man pain pain in the house. And if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about pain, well, I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to suggest what you can do. How about you just
Speaker 1: go read up on it a little more. Uh. And
Speaker 1: since I said that it's time for a listener meal,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call this the Las Vegas Beavers. I
Speaker 1: just got done listening to the Beaver podcast, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, we got a lot of response on that one.
Speaker 1: People love their beavers, especially baby beavers. Oh yeah, they're
Speaker 1: the best. I just wanted to give you a fun
Speaker 1: little tidbit of information. Chuck said that you can't find
Speaker 1: or that you can find beavers almost everywhere except the desert,
Speaker 1: which is somewhat true. Uh, they can't live out in
Speaker 1: the open amongst the cacti. But the sizeable population of
Speaker 1: beavers in Las Vegas is testament to their ability to
Speaker 1: survive the heat. They're about eighty to one beavers living
Speaker 1: in the Clark County, Wetlands, just just about twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty minutes from the strip. It was a shock when
Speaker 1: I first heard of this, but have since taken several
Speaker 1: trips to see them. Thanks for all the work, enjoy
Speaker 1: the show. That's from Josh. Very short and sweet us
Speaker 1: from Josh uh Eretics. That's a great great first name,
Speaker 1: great last name, Josh, and I love how that email
Speaker 1: just kind of petered out at the end there, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're His new name is Josh Peter Eretics. Okay, great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the email, JP, And if you want to
Speaker 1: be like JP and send us an email, you can
Speaker 1: do so. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.