Turn down the volume on your pain with Dr. Rachel Zoffness

Pain is built by the brain, and because the brain can change, pain can change. That is the core of what pain psychologist Dr. Rachel Zoffness lays out in this episode. Pain is never all in your head, but it is never only in the body part that hurts either. It is biopsychosocial: biology, psychology, and your social world all turn the volume up or down.

Dr. Zoffness is faculty at the UCSF School of Medicine, lectures on pain science at Stanford, and is the author of Tell Me Where It Hurts: The New Science of Pain and How to Heal. She walks through her three core truths about pain, why 96% of medical schools teach no dedicated pain science, the pain dial (how stress, mood, and attention change what you feel), and the pain recipe: writing down what makes a bad pain day so you can build the opposite. She closes with the three things that matter most for a healthy life with pain: movement, social health, and balance.

Time Stamps:

03:48 Why pain is coming for all of us

07:56 Core truths 1 and 2: pain is the brain's opinion, and the brain can change

10:40 Core truth 3: pain is always biopsychosocial

16:05 A hammer and a bigger hammer: why medicine reaches for pills and surgery

19:41 The sociological domain: loneliness, trauma, and the 80% overlap

23:06 Acute vs. chronic pain, and the opioid lie

26:40 The pain dial: how stress and anxiety turn the volume up

27:46 Mood and attention change pain volume

32:03 Your high pain recipe, your low pain recipe, and painsomnia

36:11 Movement first, pain reduction later

37:35 Loneliness, cortisol, and social health

41:12 You have more power over your pain than you've been told

Links:

Dr. Rachel Zoffness (free resources page): https://www.zoffness.com

Tell Me Where It Hurts: The New Science of Pain and How to Heal

Instagram: @therealdoczoff

Fit for Task Muscle and Strength Workshop: https://40plusfitness.com/muscle