CAN WE TRAIN OUR BRAIN TO DEFY PAIN?

The Painful Truth: The New Science Of Why We Hurt And How We Can Heal Monty Lyman

If one-in-five people worldwide were suffering from a long-term, debilitating medical condition that wrecks lives and costs economies billions in healthcare and sickness absences, we’d take it seriously, wouldn’t we? In fact, the condition with this widespread toll was recognised as a disease only in 2019: it’s persistent or chronic pain.

But pain is part of being human, and by trying to understand it we can reduce and manage it, says Monty Lyman in this accessible and well-written book. One of the book’s central ideas is that pain is ‘our protector’. For example, if you pull a back muscle, your nervous system tells your brain you’re hurt. The brain produces the feeling of pain, which leads you to protect your back. The problem is that this protective response can become over-zealous, telling you you’re in pain when the physical source of that pain – the injury – is long gone. ‘No brain, no pain,’ as Lyman puts it.

Lyman, a doctor himself (though not a pain specialist), presents interesting science and case studies to explore pain.

Genetics can affect pain, but so can emotion, past trauma and social factors. Making people feel safe is important, he says. An example, which may seem trivial on an individual level, takes on a huge importance at a population level: that of needle fear and pain. If vaccination drives, such as the Covid one, are to work, it’s important for healthcare staff to create positive, comforting environments.

Lyman is at pains to stress this is not a self-help book. He does provide some approaches to dealing with pain (including knitting) in the last chapter. But after having convinced us that pain is a huge problem, he could have devoted more space to potential solutions. The idea that we could train the ‘overprotective brain to be less protective’, and so tackle an enormous public health issue, is an enticing one.