Daily Gratitude: I’ve written about this many times before and I’m always surprised that more people aren’t clamoring for more info. There are more than 51.6 million American adults (21% of the population) live with chronic pain. 17.1 million American adults live with high-impact chronic pain, or pain that frequently limits life or work activities. Chronic pain is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States. About 83% of people with high-impact chronic pain are unable to work. People with chronic pain have at least twice the risk of suicide compared to those without chronic pain. But it can be changed. Most chronic pain is not caused by structural conditions no matter what you’ve been told. Of course, there are structural conditions that can cause pain like cancer, infections, tumors. But the majority of CHRONIC pain has been learned by your brain. Your brain has simply reacted to a threat – real or perceived – OR, one from the past that is triggered by something happening in your life right now. How dare I say these things? Because even though I’m a doctor and it’s all contrary to what I was taught, I could be a poster child for this. Notice a similarity here. These are truths but they are not what I was taught during my training. My brain learned one thing and it took major effort for it to develop new neural pathways that unlearned all that and then embraced the new way of thinking (which, by the way, is not new at all). It takes a lot of work and a lot of willingness to pry open your past to do this work but it saved my life and can save yours too. The brain can establish new pathways that are pain free. Did you know that the areas that control emotional pain are almost adjacent to those that cause physical pain? It’s pretty easy to understand how one can “decide” (it’s in quotes because it’s a subconscious decision) that it’s preferable to experience physical pain rather than the emotional pain. Neuroplasticity means you can change all this and get rid of your chronic pain. But you have to be willing to do the work. This isn’t something you can just get a pill or a shot for. It’s your journey.