Pain is the body’s danger signal.  If we injure ourselves, the body normally sends signals to the brain telling us we have hurt ourselves and the brain creates pain.  That pain signal is important because it’s meant to stop us from doing further damage by removing our hand from a hot stove or not walking on a sprained ankle.  We wouldn’t survive very long without pain warning us when we are doing something dangerous.   

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However, recent studies have shown that most people who suffer from chronic pain - defined as pain that has lasted for more than 3 months - are actually suffering from neuroplastic pain.  Neuroplastic pain is not the result of a structural injury, it’s the brain misinterpreting safe signals from the body as if they are harmful.  The brain is making a mistake.

 

Why does this false alarm happen?  The reasons are different for everyone.  Some may have suffered from an injury that healed but the pain persisted long afterwards.  Some may have developed symptoms during a particularly stressful time in their lives.  The result is the same - the brain gets caught in a feedback loop that can be hard to uncover.  But it’s due to learned neural pathways - and what can be learned can also be unlearned.  And that is great news!

 

Although neuroplastic pain can be treated psychologically, the pain is absolutely not imaginary. Recent brain imaging studies have clearly shown that not only is the pain very real, but neuroplastic pain activates the same parts of the brain that are involved in the processing of emotion, memory and learning - not the same areas that are activated when you have an acute injury.