The Pain Relief Secret: How to Retrain Your Nervous System, Heal Your Body, and Overcome Chronic Pain

Until recently, we thought the nervous system was hardwired to sense and perceive pain in a predictable, unchanging way. We now know that changes within our nervous systems affect the way we experience pain. Pain we feel as a result of these adaptations is called neuroplastic pain.

Considering all the potential damage that tight muscles can cause, it’s no wonder that our nervous systems want us to pay attention

amygdala is overactive, our reactions to pain are intensified, making our pain feel worse than it actually is.

Another important aspect of this phenomenon is that stress-induced analgesia typically occurs when there’s an external stressor that takes attention away from the pain—like someone threatening our life, or the need to escape

Just a few weeks of stress causes neurons, particularly neurons in the hippocampus (Illustration 4), a part of the brain involved in memory and learning, to begin to wither and die.

Muscle fibers store only a few seconds’ worth of ATP, so when we start running our bodies must produce more of this energy source almost immediately.

nerves send a message to the brain saying, “Hey! Our body is being hurt or might possibly be hurt soon! Do something now so it doesn’t get worse!” Second, when that message reaches the brain, a perceptual process creates the actual sensation of pain.

injuries, and found that inflammatory cells produce a large amount of insulin-like growth factor, a substance that greatly increases the rate at which muscle cells regenerate.

feel the negative effects of anaerobic metabolism when we’re exercising so hard that this recycling process can’t keep up. The dull ache and burning sensation we feel in our muscles during strenuous exercise is a result of a buildup of hydrogen ions that activate nociceptors.