Deep Resilience: Pain and Acupuncture

Pain Chapter 3.25.2022 for sharing

“The easiest pain to bear is someone else’s.”  Francois de la Rochefoucauld.

We might be inclined to think that pain is unlike any of the other conditions discussed in Deep Resilience and not subject to the laws of Dr. One.  Pain is real!  Pain is urgent and serious!  But even pain is subject to the laws of balance, nonlinearity[i], Man≠ Machine, and It All Spins Together.  It may surprise you but pain gives some of the clearest examples of the laws.  The law of balance requiring that we Do No Harm we see the wages of back surgeries and opiates. Bioplausibility cortisone injections. The law of  nonlinearity is exemplified by the fact that small or even nonexistent stimuli can lead to an exaggerated perception of pain, and conversely some instances severe pain isn’t perceived at all.  Similarly, we will see that clearly Man≠Machine in that abnormal Xrays and MRI’s do not correlate in anyway with patients’ back pain.  And we will explore some disabling pain conditions such as migraine and fibromyalgia that have few biomarkers at all. And finally following the law of it all spinning together, we see the biochemical connection between stress and pain, and how elements of the immune system are intimately related to pain and its perception.

[i] Ahn AC, Nahin RL, Calabrese C, et al. Applying principles from complex systems to studying the efficacy of CAM therapies. J Altern Complement Med. 2010;16(9):1015-1022. doi:10.1089/acm.2009.0593