Dr. Sanjay Gupta

And you may not be able to identify the cause yourself.

Still dealing with, still remembering.

Neuroplasticity, you know, which is sort of the name for this larger concept of being able to change your brain.

There's this phrase, I think it came from like the 1940s, Hebbian, Hebb was the doctor who coined this, but basically neurons that fire together, wire together.

The thing about neuroplasticity that I think a lot of people don't realize is that it's not an inherently benevolent process, nor is it malevolent, nor is it bad.

It's neutral.

It'll kind of do whatever you ask it to do.

So if you're hyper-focused on the pain, you're firing neurons together, and they're going to wire together, and that's going to reinforce the memory loop.

What is, I think, fascinating about pain is that pain circuits travel, and they go through all these various areas.

Your amygdala, which is your emotional center, it tends to be larger in patients who are in chronic pain.

Their prefrontal cortex tends to be smaller.

So their judgment and things like that tend to not be as good because their prefrontal cortex is shrunk to some extent.

But it also goes through the hippocampus, which is your memory store.

So you might start to really remember it well, right?

Your past experiences with pain, you remember those and they may amplify your current episode with pain.

So every time you start to have a twinge of pain, it's like, man, it just like skyrockets.

It's like it just went from zero to 100 just like that.

And I've seen this in patients, even like in real time.

They'll be in my office and they'll sort of be there.

And then all of a sudden they're cringing.