Pain

All Pain Occurs in the Brain

Pain isn’t always a bad thing. It’s the bodys natural way of communicating with the brain that something is wrong. The problem occurs when pain persists even after the body has healed. Pain signals can keep firing in the brain for months or even years, leading to chronic pain.

When an individual experiences pain, multiple interactive neural pathways are influencing pain signals at several levels at once: Painful stimuli interact with pain pathways and after repeated exposure, these pathways can become altered and start firing even when there is no longer painful stimulus. Repeated exposure to painful stimuli can cause the individual to become more sensitive to this stimuli, and the brain can respond with worse and longer-term pain. Even the endocrine and immune systems of the body can be affected. Pain becomes amplified through these multiple interacting pathways, triggering more neural networks, and becoming more and more resistant to treatment. This can lead to all kinds of issues, including disturbances of mood, sleep, energy, libido, memory, concentration, behavior, and stress tolerance.

The neural pathways involved with pain sensation also overlap the ones involved in emotional regulation, so pain can even stimulate the regions of the brain that control emotion. This can lead to depression, anxiety, and fear.

Studies show that pain is closely linked to brainwave activity. Pain has been associated with a decrease in alpha activity and an increase in beta activity. Pain relief has been associated with decreases in beta and increases in alpha activity. By training the brain to regulate it’s brainwaves, pain can be reduced or even eliminated altogether.

Neurofeedback has been shown to be effective for many different types of chronic pain conditions, including back pain, peripheral nerve injury, pain from cancer, fibromyalgia, and migraine headaches.

 

Headache

Migraines are often triggered by stress. So, it would make sense that to reduce migraines, we should start with reducing stress. Neurofeedback is able to target the brain patterns that contribute to unnecessary stress, resulting in decreased migraine pain.

With the help of Neurofeedback, the brain can become more stable, leading to better self regulation. This can dramatically decrease or even eliminate migraines causes by stress.

Neurofeedback and pain management

Studies indicate that Neurofeedback has a direct influence on pain processing. By teaching the brain how to regulate itself, it learns to balance itself on its own. This can lead to a decrease in pain, or even the elimination of pain altogether. Generally, we also see improvement with related issues, such as depression and anxiety.

Neurofeedback can also help relieve pain by regulating the emotional control regions associated with pain. An example is the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that causes pain. When applied to this region, Neurofeedback can reduce pain and increase tolerance in individuals with chronic pain.

Pain can lead the brain to become disorganized and dysregulated. Neurofeedback creates long-term changes in the neuronal networks that balances out the changes caused by chronic pain.