If you’ve any doubt about the potential of perspective to reduce the experience of chronic pain, take a look at the numbers…
Habituation vs Sensitisation
A single sensory neuron has about 1300 presynaptic terminals, 40% of which contain neurotransmitters.
Over time, such as with chronic pain, our body tends to sensitise. We fear a worsening of pain, or causing new injury, because we view our existing pain as a threatening stimulus – understandably!
As this process goes on, those 1300 terminals increase to a whopping 2700. As if this isn’t bad enough, the number of active terminals jumps from 40% of the total to 60%. That means the number of neurotransmitters carrying pain signals to the brain for each neuron increases from 520, to over 1620! For each neuron!
If we can learn to view our pain as non-threatening, non-fear-inducing, our body instead habituates – i.e. becomes less sensitive. Physiologically this causes a huge drop in both the number of presynaptic terminals (down to 850), and an even greater drop in the proportion of those troublemaking active neurotransmitters (to less than 12%).
So, if we can retrain ourselves to view our pain as nonthreatening, we can reduce the impact it has on us. Potentially, over time (because it took time for us to become sensitised, it’s not going to be reversed overnight) from 60% of 2700 down to about 12% of 850 – that’s 1600 down to 100!!
Even a fraction of that number would have a noticeable impact on the life of someone living with chronic pain.
And if we can ‘steal’ some of those neurotransmitters to report more pleasant stimuli, we have an even better chance of making positive changes to our experience.