.
.
.
.
things i never heard from my pain specialists.. doctors and pain psychologists/// Why????
*
*
*
chronic pain differs from acute pain; that unlike acute pain, chronic pain doesn’t represent harm.
.
.
Pain has to go through the mind: the anterior cingulate cortex, which registers pain’s unpleasant character.”
*
*
simply becoming mindful of one’s emotional response to pain decreases its unpleasantness and improves functioning, and because meditation had been shown to reduce the unpleasantness of acute pain by almost 60 percent (making meditation by some measures superior even to morphine)
*
*
Research shows, for example, that how we interpret the meaning of pain has a dramatic impact on our ability to tolerate it.
*
*
No one ever told me, throwing away my opioids, undertaking intense aerobic exercise till exhaustion would transform my pain.
*
*
No one informed me that any attention I gave my pain would increase it.
*
*
No one ever imagined pain could be impacted, diminished, changed, and altered for me.
*
*
*
After the operations, nerve killings and meds, after the doctors handed my body back over to me, I was left with enough pain to ruin my existence.
*
*
My pain has changed from dominating my life with suffering to an annoyance (I do not suffer now).
*
*
Bringing my pain out to play while exercising, altered my relationship with it. Now I know that this change happened in the anterior cingulate cortex area of the brain.
*
*
Aerobic exercise, meditation and attitude can devour a big portion of your suffering/
.
.
.
Archive for the ‘Chronic Pain’ Category
14 Sep
Chronic pain: rewritten as a resource for the top of blog page…
14 Sep
Accepting Emotional Pain ///undefeated mind
*
*
*
*
*
Though the experience of physical pain and emotional pain are clearly different, functional imaging studies show that, with few exceptions, the regions of the brain that these types of pain activate are identical.
*
*
*
These include not only the regions responsible for giving pain its unpleasant character, but also those responsible for regulating its size, location, and intensity (perhaps partially explaining the startling finding that Tylenol, a centrally acting pain reliever, alleviates not only the pain of a smashed finger but also the pain of hurt feelings.)
*
*
*
No wonder, then, that physical and emotional pain produce the same reaction: a strong desire to avoid the things that cause them.
*
*
*
13 Sep
The Undefeated Mind: Meditation and Pain People
Ayle Permata Sari
.
.
.
Because studies had shown that simply becoming mindful of one’s emotional response to pain decreases its unpleasantness and improves functioning, and because meditation had been shown to reduce the unpleasantness of acute pain by almost 60 percent (making meditation by some measures superior even to morphine), she first began teaching him how to meditate.
.
.
.
In my opinion and much stated beliefs:
Any attention we give our pain, increases it, period.
.
Chronic pain can be compressed, changed, altered with effort, aerobic exercise and attitude. more to follow:
.
.
.
12 Sep
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.. this is the mindfulness based therapy I used for pain and PTSD
.
.
Undefeated Mind:
.
.
“Acceptance and commitment therapy proposes that by fully surrendering to pain, the sufferer can paradoxically prevent himself from being defeated by it.
.
.
Such acceptance, his therapist had said, while having little power to decrease his pain, might have great power to decrease his suffering.
.
.
For one thing, accepting his pain might enable him to stop making futile efforts to avoid it and perhaps to start doing things he wanted, like going back to work.
.
.
Also, she suggested, clinging to the possibility that he might still avoid his pain could also be engendering fear—fear that he might not avoid his pain—which could actually be intensifying the unpleasantness of his pain”.
.
.
.
This works for trauma fears also.
.
.
.
11 Sep
even more pain
*
*
“This seems to be true even when pain represents both benefit and harm, as anesthesiologist Henry Beecher found during World War II when he observed that 75 percent of soldiers with severe battlefield injuries—broken bones and torn limbs—reported experiencing only minor pain (even going so far as to decline morphine) because of what their injuries signified: they were going home.
*
*
Studies have further shown that expecting pain to be severe worsens our experience of it, and expecting it to be mild improves it.
*
*
Further, being psychologically braced for pain also lessens its unpleasantness.
*
*
This is true regardless of its cause, whether it’s from a medical procedure done for our benefit, or from torture (even though pain caused with the intent to harm has been shown to hurt more than pain caused incidentally or accidentally).”
*
*
.
11 Sep
more pain: Undefeated Mind
*
*
*
“Even if the physical sensation of pain remains constant, our “affective reaction” to it—how much it makes us suffer—will vary tremendously depending on several factors.
*
*
*
Research shows, for example, that how we interpret the meaning of pain has a dramatic impact on our ability to tolerate it.
*
*
*
In one study, subjects reported pain they believed represented tissue damage to be more intense than pain they believed didn’t, possibly explaining why women rate cancer pain as more unpleasant than labor pain even when their intensities are the same.
*
*
Not only that, but when we focus on the benefit of pain (when one exists), we’re actually able to reduce its unpleasantness.
*
Another study showed that women in labor who focused primarily on their impending delivery rated the unpleasantness of their pain half that felt by women who focused primarily on their pain.”
*
*
*
10 Sep
Part two pain…complexities!!!!
*
*
*
We know this is how the brain experiences pain because of imaging studies and because patients who’ve had damage to the anterior cingulate cortex feel the sensation of pain but not its unpleasantness.
*
*
That is, they feel pain but aren’t bothered by it (interestingly, in some people, morphine has the same effect).
*
*
When the anterior cingulate cortex isn’t functioning, pain is still experienced but seems to lose its emotional impact and thus its motivating force.
*
*
This finding, that the sensation of pain and the unpleasantness of pain come from distinct neurological processes that occur in different locations within the the brain, explains how a single pain stimulus can cause such subjectively different pain experiences.
.
.
.
10 Sep
Undefeated Mind: ,,,,, ,Pain,,, who knew?
*
*
*
“Pain is a fascinating phenomenon. The way the brain registers physical pain, for instance, is not only complex but counterintuitive.
*
*
*
Though the pain of a stubbed toe or a headache may seem like a single, unified experience, it actually represents the sum of two different experiences created by two separate areas of the brain—
*
*
one called the posterior insula, which registers the sensation of pain (its quality, intensity, and so on)
*
*
and the other the anterior cingulate cortex, which registers pain’s unpleasant character.”
*
*
*
Remember this author is a skilled doctor and a Buddhist. His perspective seems to be pragmatic and very unique to me.
*
*
So, we have a judgment center for feeling pain’s uncomfortableness.
*
*
So, I would say, we can influence pain as it passes through our mind, cool.
*
*
More to come,
*
*
*
7 Aug
Aerobic exercise to exhaustion, okay past wanting to quit, go lay on the couch?
*
*
*
Aerobic exercise can trigger the release of powerful, natural occurring endorphins, opioid like substances, pain killers without a prescription.
*
*
*
We have our own pharmacy right here at our doorstep.
*
*
*
It takes exercising to bring the pain out, to access this personal RX dispensary. (This means we are headed towards our pain, like we do with the Breathing Track and PTSD triggers, not around or avoid, towards.)
*
*
*
For me this is walking uphill, I bring my pain out to exercise, to walk him, Mr. P. for his daily routine.
*
*
*
Understand chronic pain is not functional, it is broken, a pain signal is constantly firing messages Of danger.
*
*
*
Summoning your pain with exercise, then continuing to walk, swim, tread, ellipse or run will change you, your relationship with your pain, your life.
*
*
*
My chronic pain changed, condensed, became something else slowly.
.
.
.
Pain has to travel through the mind and thus opportunity to impact it, has arrived with practice.
.
.
.
Takes leather balls to play rugby.
*
*
*
*
22 Jul
Part two pain..
*
*
*
As a way to better understand the meditation experience, think about the mental focus a top endurance athlete exhibits in competition.
*
*
The conviction to overcome excruciating muscle aches and pains enables world class cyclists to complete the Tour de France (a 2000 mile race over 21 days at altitude) and long distance runners to finish marathons in around 2 hours (averaging less than 5 min per mile).
.
.
Of course, great endurance athletes are not necessarily meditators, but they are individuals who have cultivated mental discipline with years of training in which they have come to appreciate the essence of “mind over matter.”
*
*
This study hints at the fascinating implication that one need not pursue the path of a monk, adopt an extreme stoic philosophy or even engage in an intensive meditation retreat to experience substantial health benefits.
*
*
It’s possible that intensive meditation may offer additional rewards, yet this study shows that even short-term meditation training yields a meaningful reduction in the suffering associated with common, everyday pain.
*
*
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 70 million Americans suffer from chronic pain with an economic burden of at least $100 billion in the United States.
*
*
The low cost and low risk of mindfulness meditation make it particularly attractive for chronic pain sufferers, though the value extends to anyone looking for a boost in concentration and a reduction in suffering.
*
*
In a way, we all have become conditioned to react to the distractions in our environments like a dog conditioned to the sound of a bell.
.
.
And so couldn’t we all use a bit of the calm, quiet mind lying dormant beneath the sound of the iPhone, the Blackberry, and Pavlov’s bell ringing in our ear?
*
*
*
PTSD - A Way Out.com 