Dr. Rachel Zoffness

speaker

360 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Dr. Rachel Zoffness’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Hidden Brain · How to Combat Pain · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

and you're lonely and isolated and alone, you are more likely to get sick.

If you are already sick, you are more likely to get sicker, and you are also more likely to die.

And there's a number of reasons for this, but one of the reasons that I find so compelling

is that when we are chronically lonely and isolated, our bodies produce high levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone that over time suppresses our immune system, which of course affects morbidity and mortality and also pain.

Social behavior absolutely and profoundly changes our human body and it has a huge impact on the pain we feel.

That's right.

So just as there's a recipe for brownies, there is always a recipe for pain.

And we talked about how pain is biopsychosocial.

So in this recipe for a high pain day, there are a number of biological, psychological, and sociological ingredients that are going into pain amplification.

So I'm going to give you my high pain recipe.

For example, if I'm sitting and staring at the computer for too many hours and I've had a poor night's sleep and I'm eating a crap diet and I'm not protecting time to move my body and exercise and I'm socially isolated, I know that combined with some other ingredients, that is going to construct what I like to call a high pain recipe.

Now,

The really cool thing about constructing pain recipes with my patients is that as soon as I'm able to help them map out a high pain recipe, we are then able to construct a low pain recipe.

And a low pain recipe is often just the opposite.

So I mentioned poor sleep.

Poor sleep for me is a predictor of high pain.

So I know...

that if I want to change my pain recipe, I need to start implementing a sleep hygiene protocol.

For example, for myself, I know that I need to set a sleep time and a wake time.

I know that I need to stop doom scrolling before bed and put my phone away a couple of hours before getting into bed.

Showing 221–240 of 360 · page 12 of 18