More than 50 million Americans, and billions worldwide, suffer from chronic pain, including back pain and migraines (the two most debilitating health conditions in the world), knee and hip pain, sciatica, fibromyalgia, gastrointestinal disorders, and more. Unexplained persistent pain is a growing epidemic that costs Americans more than $500 billion a year in healthcare and disability costs and lost productivity. It's the most common reason for doctor and hospital visits. Yet maddeningly, doctors often have no idea how to treat chronic pain patients, and often dismiss them as having nothing wrong, a problem that disproportionately affects women and people of color. About half a million Americans have died over the past two decades after overdosing on opioids, commonly taken in a desperate quest for pain relief.
Fortunately, a kernel of hope-and a path to recovery-are emerging from all this needless suffering, as a quiet revolution unfolds in healthcare that mainstream medicine and culture are finally beginning to notice: the recognition that most chronic pain symptoms do not have physical causes but originate in the brain as a fear response to perceived threats. Pain is a danger signal, like a fire alarm, which helps us survive by avoiding harm. But sometimes our brain misinterprets threats and overreacts by causing or prolonging pain when no danger is present. The brain reads not only physical but emotional stressors, and emotions themselves, as threats, especially if our nervous system is in a chronic fear state from ongoing stress. Chronic pain, also called neuroplastic or mind-body pain, is thus the product of a hyper-vigilant nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight mode, permanently primed to create a whole range of debilitating symptoms as a warning bell against unspecified danger.
Mind-body pain is 100 percent real. It is felt in the body and is not "all in our head." Yet with the process as it applies to pain symptoms still little understood or accepted, tens of millions of people are likely misdiagnosing and mistreating their pain. Rather than shots, drugs, surgery, or rest, what's needed is a psychological approach-a change in thinking, or mindset-that signals to the brain that it is safe and can turn off its alarm system.
A growing community of doctors, researchers, therapists, and patients-along with mounting research demonstrating its efficacy-are now poised to take this topic mainstream. Indeed, what started out as a hunch by health-care practitioners on the fringe is finally being proved true by science. And the burgeoning community of patients who have recovered from chronic pain using mind-body techniques-and who share and reinforce their healing experiences with others in online forums worldwide-has given the mind-body pain revolution new visibility and momentum. Together, the healers and the healed are advancing ideas with the potential to change the world.
Brain Pain is an accessible, story-driven book that explains the fundamentals of the mind-body pain revolution; describes the wealth of scientific evidence validating the belief that most chronic pain is brain-based instead of physical; and presents the most thorough but simple and compassionate recipe for healing yet to be offered in a single volume.
