- [Narrator] How can science objectively solve a problem
as subjective as pain?
(electronic music)
- Pain isn't entirely a bad thing.
And I'm not just saying that because I love Captain Kirk.
You know, "I don't want my pain taken away,
I need my pain."
Star Trek 5.
It's awful, don't watch it.
But the good Captain does have a point.
Pain is useful.
It's our body's way of telling us something has gone wrong
and we should do something about it,
like don't put your weight on that injured ankle,
or stop touching that very hot,
but beckoning object,
or don't pet the pointy kitty.
But pain isn't just physical,
it's also emotional.
It is by definition, distressing.
And sometimes that pain isn't associated
with an acute temporary situation,
but rather a chronic condition.
And in this case, pain isn't so useful.
And our modern arsenal for treating this kind of pain
is a sort of nuke it from orbit type of approach.
Usually we prescribe opioids to treat that pain,
and they come with a host of risks,
including dependence,
addiction,
maybe even death.
So how do we solve a problem like pain,
without creating more problem?
When you experience pain,
typically sensory neurons throughout your body,
called nociceptors, send tiny electrical signals
via structures called Sodium channels,
through your peripheral nervous system.
The signals then move through your spinal cord
to different regions of you brain
so that can process this painful stimulus
and figure out something to do about it.
So what if we could cut off
that communication process somewhere?
Some research involving spider toxins
has discovered that certain Sodium channels
are associated with certain types of pain.
Like burning pain versus mechanical pain.
So what if we could develop pain killers
that targets specific Sodium channels?
That pain gets blocked but other sensory information,
including other types of pain can still get to your brain.
Or there's other research looking into the pain
we feel when our nervous system is malfunctioning.
You see, that tends to be chronic pain
because neurons that are damaged
take a long time to repair or replace themselves.
What if we could grow new neurons
using a patient's tissue and some stem cell technologies,
and then replace the damaged or destroyed neurons.
Solutions like these would be amazing,
but they don't target the biggest player in the pain game,
and that is our minds.
You see pain is a psychological phenomenon,
and I don't mean that it isn't real.
What I do mean is if you experience chronic pain,
that pain reshapes your brain.
It changes the connections
and the chemistry inside your brain.
This is one way where the miraculous plasticity
of our brains isn't so great.
The changes create a sort of feedback loop
where you experience pain and then you get upset about it.
Which makes you more sensitive to pain,
which means you get more upset about it and so on.
If we could figure out exactly how and why
these changes occur in the brain,
we might be able to take steps
to prevent them from happening.
And that would reduce our reliance upon risky treatments
like opioids.
We're looking into both the physical and emotional
sides of this feedback loop.
On the physical side, scientist are looking
at how certain immune disorders
can create inflammations in our brain
which drive these physical changes.
Perhaps we'll be able to have immune therapies
to prevent further changes from happening.
On the emotional side,
we've seen a lot of research into various therapies
to deal with the emotional distress of pain,
including virtual reality therapies.
Pain's dual nature means it's really complicated,
but we're learning more every day
about how pain works,
and thus how to work around it.
That brings me to a question for you guys this week.
If you could undergo a procedure
that changed pain into emotionally neutral information,
would you do it?
Or do you think distress is necessary
for you to actually seek out treatment for the pain's cause?
I want to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring this show
and making it possible.
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It's painless.
I promise.