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

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

So for reasons that are not yet fully understood, simply believing that our pain will go away is enough to stimulate our natural pain-relieving mechanisms.

Some pain pathways pass through the amygdala, which helps create our emotional reaction to pain.

These opioid receptors are located throughout the CNS and PNS, but are most concentrated in areas of the brain that process pain information.

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

When we perceive stress, a series of hormones released in the brain triggers the adrenal gland to secrete hormones called glucocorticoids. These bind to glucocorticoid receptors, which are present in almost every cell in the body. They suppress the immune response so that all of the body’s energy can be used to fight the stressor.

The amygdala, along with the hippocampus and the rest of the limbic system, helps process emotional reactions and memories. Prolonged high levels of glucocorticoids actually enhance amygdala function, stimulating neuron growth and making synapses more active and sensitive.

Our natural analgesics serve an evolutionary purpose: They allow us to run fast or lift heavy objects even if we’re injured. But what about acute stress that isn’t life-threatening? It turns out that exercise elicits the same stress response, triggering the release of endogenous opioids that act in numerous areas of the brain, spinal cord, and peri

it’s important to understand that the more often your nociceptors are stimulated, the more sensitization is likely to occur. So, running on an already injured and painful knee will not only damage the joint further, but may also increase the amount of pain you feel in the future.