How the Mind Impacts Chronic Pain
I’ve talked about the mind and body connection many times. What’s going on in our minds can manifest itself in the body as stress that turns into disease and chronic pain.
Today I want to focus on chronic pain, which has reached unprecedented numbers. According to the National Institutes of Health, chronic pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. It may very well be the biggest health issue on the planet! Persistent pain impacts 100 million adults and costs from $560 to $635 billion annually in health-care costs and lost productivity, according to research by Johns Hopkins University health economists Darrell J. Gaskin, Ph.D, and Patrick Richard, Ph.D.
The origins of chronic physical pain are varied. The normal aging process can lead to pain from degenerative changes in the spine. Arthritis alone is one of the most common causes of chronic pain, affecting one of every two adults, according to the U.S. Bone and Joint Initiative.
One of the biggest causes of chronic pain, however, is no obvious cause. This can be incredibly frustrating for people who seek answers, and there are none.
We do know, however, that the biggest cause of illness and disease is stress. In fact, it could be responsible for 90 to 95 percent of illness and disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Dr. Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief.
According to Dr. Lipton, the human body isn’t meant to get sick. Your immune system can heal anything. That may sound like a radical concept to you, but hear me out.
In all my years of working with clients, I believe with all my heart that maybe the biggest issue outside a traumatic physical injury is spiritual and psychological. Most of us would agree that love is the most essential thing in our lives but we don’t live that way. We live for our careers, our money and whatever people think of us. This fear-based thinking kicks in your body’s internal stress response. When your stress response kicks in your immunity turns down because it requires the most energy in your body.
I’ve seen this within my own company over the years with people who are in chronic pain. When we address issues like relationship issues with mom, dad or their siblings the chronic pain goes away!
Your body is capable of miracles if your mind and heart are at peace! If your mind and heart are not at peace, then you are on your way to chronic pain.
Chronic pain is like taking a sledgehammer to the living room. It wears our bodies down in countless ways. We lose quality of sleep when we are in pain. We lose the ability to concentrate and remember things. Researchers from the University of Alberta found that pain not only affects physical and mental well-being but it interferes with the memory and long -term processing and storage and that affects your ability to remember and concentrate.
A National Sleep Foundation study found that 21 percent of Americans experience chronic pain and on average they have 42 minutes less of restorative sleep per night and over time you can’t absorb that much loss of sleep. Chronic pain causes changes in your DNA and chromosomes and nervous system.
Pain also affects your relationships. If you are in chronic pain you are not as patient, you are more likely to say things in anger. Unfortunately, one of the most significant side effects of pain are anxiety and depression. In fact, most doctors assume if you have chronic pain you will be anxious and/or depressed.
Some of the so-called treatments for chronic pain end up long term making it worse. I’m talking about the overprescription of pain meds. Opioid abuse has reached epidemic proportions today.
I believe the best approach is healing the issues that are causing the person stress that are keeping the immune system and omni potential stem cells in the body from doing their miracles. This might not work 100 percent of the time, but in my experience, it works very well. I can’t count how many people over 17 years that I have worked with have been able to go off their painkillers and we never one time addressed their physical pain!
We used to think the body and mind were two separate entities. Today we know the mind controls the body. So if you heal the issues in the mind, and I would say also the spiritual, there is a really good chance that chronic pain can be healed and it’s almost certain it’s going to get better.
I encourage you to try my Trilogy and Memory Engineering methods which come at the issue from two very different approaches, one mechanical and one not so mechanical.
Sometimes it’s as easy as identifying what negative emotion you feel the most when you think about your pain? (Fear, anger, frustration, etc.) Work on those memories through Trilogy. That simple first step works amazingly well. Then with Memory Engineering it’s almost like you are traveling back in time and changing what happened and changing a negative memory to a positive memory.
If you have one takeaway from this blog it’s this -- the immune system is the best tool to end chronic pain, not medicine. It’s the best pill and the one that delivers the best long-term results.
Bottom line? The solution is not to work on the chronic pain, but on the source of the chronic pain.
Have a blessed, wonderful day!
