Now obviously pain yeah pain is real.
Yeah.
You know obviously nobody is suggesting that you're imagining the pain or anything like
this.
And you know you're doing a lot of different strategies.
Like you say ANS REWIRE is multilateral.
it is based on the idea though that it's not just central
sensitization but there's other processes that are wrong in a body, inflammation,
gut dysfunction, lots of things, and it's also talking about the fact
that really what's driving all of this is the dysfunction of the autonomic nervous
system.
So you're doing all of these things.
And there's some specific things for pain, but I mean how did the
pain resolve?
I mean how do you go from having pain all the time to now not
having any pain?
I mean Yeah.
Did happen in one go was it was it a particular strategy or treatment or how did
this happen?
It was so fast.
It was shockingly fast.
Um, I listened to the pain management video twice, so I applied it
once when I had a migraine and the migraine went away, which to me was magical,
although I had a hard time replicating that.
But so it didn't happen like that for migraines afterwards that easily?
No.
But nonetheless it had an impact on you cause you were kind of going, how is this possible?
Yeah.
Oh what the heck just happened, yeah?
And it was, what I learned in the videos was about the imagery and how powerful
visualization really is and how um the same mechanisms occur in the brain when
you visualize something as it does when you actually do that thing and that blew
my mind.
Well you're obviously very research-based.
And I have a degree in psychology.
You have a degree in psychology but you’re doing a lot of research in the mecfs and Fibro
advocacy world.
I mean you’re talking about imagery?
I mean hello, like I know.
How did you connect that?
Now obviously I do share some research in the program like for people listening you
know you know they are for instance people in hospitals with severe burn victims who
use virtual reality, mm-hmm, in order to help them cope with their pain and
reduce their pain levels.
Right.
So you saw, what was it that research that convinced you
hey, there can be some things I can do?
Or was it the wacky experience with the migraine that kind of did it for you?
I think the research had the biggest impact on me.
Right.
Because I felt like okay, this is solid this is tried and
true.
There is evidence to base this on.
Once I felt comfortable with that then I would apply it and then it worked, and I realized
okay, this is actually really, I have the power right here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah and so you obviously had pain all over your body right, not just the migraines?
Yes.
So you know here you are you've got pain all over your
body, every day I assume or?
Every day.
Okay, so then one day there's less pain or one day how, what did you do?
How did it happen?
Sorry to press you, but you know people wanna know?
You know I think it must have happened one day, uh but it took me a couple of, two three
days to realize that hmmm, I don't have pain.
Alright.
And so that was a shock.
And again I thought okay, it's a one-off.
It's going to come back and it never did.
It never came back.
It never came back at all?
No.
No and and in fact I as I began ramping up my activity level and doing more physical
things the way that I felt was different now.
I if I went to the gym and did weightlifting I would feel the normal soreness that you
feel from weightlifting, and in a day or two it
was gone.
Right.
So it was completely changed from how I was before.
And so do you did you put that down to something specific
or was it just you're not sure because you were doing all the different things
in the program?
Oh I think it was the ANS rewire portion of the program for sure.
Yes.
So the brain training portion of ANS Rewiring.
Yes.
Definitely.
Right.
Okay.
And it's embarrassing because I'd like I said I have
a degree in psychology but it was many years ago and when I learned psychology
of the brain we were taught that you know you're born with a fixed brain.
You can't form new synapses you can't form new connections.
It is what it is and we of course know now that's not
true at all.
We have plasticity in the brain and and Western medicine is
beginning to utilize that, as is sports medicine and so you know you actually
Like cochlear implants.
Cochlear implants.
Exactly.
Deaf people can hear again that couldn't happen if your brain wasn't Plastic. and yeah
I mean when dr.
Merzenich first showed his research he had to he had to use
acceptable language the suggestion that it was the brain was plastic and and
then when he finally came out right and said it I mean he had a really hard
time in the research community and Yea.
You know in the end you know he became the father of neuroplasticity and
and you know we got cochlear implants from it and all these wonderful things.
But change is sometimes difficult to to accept
but there's a lot of deaf people who can hear now, Yes who really appreciate
it.
Yes, so true.
And it's funny as an audiologist I would tell people if you're getting a hearing loss get
hearing aids now don't wait because that portion of your cortex that you know utilizes the
auditory information it will atrophy over time.
You know you need to stimulate it, keep stimulating it because it will
respond to that.
And I never thought that's plasticity I never put that
together until this program and then I thought oh my gosh that's what this is.
This is this is real stuff.
It's not woo woo.
You know.
Yeah and no one is saying that because you're doing this that the disease
is psychological.
it is completely physiological but there are coping
strategies that occur that feed into the physiology of the disease and it's
those that you address.
So you know it it all makes sense.
That's right.
I mean we in order to address the retraining of
the brain I mean we look at physical strategies, we look at physiological strategies,
mm-hmm and we look at psychological strategies because of course the brain,
the way you know connects to a heartbeat, and your your stomach, and your your body,
and your hands and your thoughts, I mean that it's all connected to the brain so we're just
using whatever mechanism we can.
Right.
And there's other mechanisms.
Yeah.There's actually many other mechanisms and that's
why people recover in so many different ways.
Right.
I just remembered something too - one of the key things that I
grasped regarding pain was to remember that pain is simply another stimulus
just like what we see and what we hear and it tastes.
It's just another one of those senses, right?
And and so I had to just remind myself, this is, don't judge
this.
Don’t place of judgment or negativity on it, which is so easy to do with pain.
Well I'm going, that’s nice of you to say that but I mean like you know, part of me
wants to say well you know get real.
I mean like, how can you say that?
I mean when you're suffering from pain for like 30
years?
Yeah.
How can you change this?
I mean this was just not like very difficult for you?
Yeah.
Or what allowed you to do that? it's super challenging but I remember this woman
who actually has CFS she's an author and she writes these Buddhist inspired books she said
that she would, when she was feeling very sick she would just lay on the couch and make
observations without judgment.
And one of them was just describe the scene.
Okay I see a middle-aged woman lying on the couch
with her eyes closed.
And you know continuing on, and so I think I
incorporated some of that to just make observations about the situation without
the emotional judgment.
Yeah which is really what's a lot of brain training
in ANS Rewiring is about.
Yeah like like the whole meditation tracks and everything Yeah to give you that foundation.
So it's wonderful to hear how you put that across.