Hidden science and occult science

The concepts presented in this blog cover the basic issues of neuronal activity, well-established concepts in biology. This is not about philosophical speculations, but cellular routines in the organism’s day to day.

Invariably, the reaction to the above is a surprise:

- It's the first time I've heard this...

or disagreement:

- I'm not convinced ...

Pain is a perception...

Citizens and professionals are not too interested in knowing how the body builds what we perceive. We perceive it, period. If I perceive pain, then I’ll take a pain "antiperceiver". If it’s  effective, there are no more questions.

Pain is a perception that the brain builds and projects onto a region of space occupied by the body...

- Leave the brains aside. What’s bothering me is my back...

Professionals and citizens devote their energies to identify the source of pain where it hurts and apply remedies there. Low back pain, please!, is a matter of muscle and skeleton... stop the nonsense!

Pain is a perception that the brain builds and projects onto a region of space occupied by the body that involves an assessment of threat...

- I DON’T think ... It hurts, period!

The reference to the brain is understood as a reference to the individual. Professionals and citizens share that identification error (the myth of me, myself and I).

Pain is a perception that the brain builds and projects onto a region of space occupied by the body that involves an assessment of threat (which is sometimes wrong)...

- You’re the one that’s wrong.

Citizens and professionals don’t give importance to the fallible condition of our brain. The immune system’s fallibility condition is recognized (allergies, autoimmune diseases), but not the neural network’s.

Pain is a perception that the brain builds and projects onto a region of space occupied by the body that involves an assessment of threat (which is sometimes wrong) of necrotic damage...

- What is that?

Citizens and professionals equate pain and damage. Any damage, either acute or chronic, degenerative or necrotic, actual or potential ... any inconvenience (“it turned out to be a cloudy day”...) is sufficient to justify the pain ... Necrosis? You won’t find that term on publications.

Pain is a perception that the brain builds and projects onto a region of space occupied by the body that involves an assessment of threat (which is sometimes wrong) of necrotic damage and that incites the individual...

- Pain exists only to annoy me... get it out of me!

Citizens and professionals disregard the role of pain from the perspective of the organism. It’s annoying, it leads to suffering. It has no purpose. The pain is a disease. We must fight it, dissolve it, kill it, cancel its receptors, its paths, its centers ... The problem is that there are no receptors, paths and pain centers.

Pain is a perception that the brain builds and projects onto a region of space occupied by the body that involves an assessment of threat (which is sometimes wrong) of necrotic damage and that incites the individual to an avoidance behavior...

- I avoid whatever causes me pain and do whatever relieves it.

The aim of perception is to encourage the individual to a previously scheduled action which is considered necessary by the organism. The aim of the itch perception is to encourage the individual to scratch even when there isn’t any parasite or toxic on the skin. The brain doesn’t want to avoid pain, but the risk of harm. If it is instructed to equate pain and threat of injury, any action it considers as protective will tend to soften the intensity of pain (placebo).

Pain is a perception ................ and incites the individual to avoid harm.

Through pain, the brain tries to force the individual to focus on the painful area, a place rated as vulnerable even when it’s not the case.

The biology of pain is a hidden, silenced science. It doesn’t matter, it disturbs, attacks the interests of citizens and professionals.

Its place is squatted by occult sciences, supported from the “anything goes” (magical molecules, energy meridians, memories of molecules, diet, meditation, massage, bone and tendon relocations ...).

- Brain? No, thanks ... I’m more into science.

Evaluative disfunction as a risk factor

A reasonably healthy body managed by a mistaken, alarmist brain that maintains defensive programs needlessly is an abused body, subjected to physical burdens that undermine its integrity. Defense programs are justified when there is a noxious state or agent.

The program of preventive removal of the ingested (ie nausea to cause vomit) is biologically justified when we have eaten something dangerous, or when an animal stuffs itself with food and then regurgitates it to feed the brood or to hide food in a safe place. Activating vomit during a migraine attack or vertigo only produces discomfort, suffering and loss of energy (food). The body tends to activate preventively the nausea when it assesses internal problems. Germs and toxic substances go in through the digestive tract. If something goes wrong internally, the noxious agent might still be in the stomach, so the stomach-pumping program is turned on. Facial pain, toothache or muscle-skeletal system pain are not accompanied by nausea. The theoretically noxious is still at the entrance (mouth) or is a matter of mechanical stress (muscle-skeletal system). Biologically, vomiting does not make sense.

Keeping the hunger program on and eagerly promoting it despite overweight generates all kinds of physical inconvenience. Hunger is for when there isn’t any food available but can be found if one tries hard enough. It makes no sense if you have any extra kilos or if there is no chance of finding a tiny bite.

Managing the organism healthily involves being right in the decision to turn on and off and maintain programs, obtaining profit from it.

The erroneous assessment of relevant structural damage in the spine ("I have arthritis, pinches, hernias...") involves the turning on of defensive programs that cancel the articular function, contracture of inadequate muscles and increase of mechanical stress with each action. A spine with "wear" needs free joints, little mechanical load, freedom and promotion of movement, trust ... not fear of movement.

The erroneous assessment of disease activates the "sickness response" that promotes the  behavior of feeling "coming down with the flu” (sore, tired, unmotivated) not being sick. In the case of fibromyalgia, the brain maintains discouragement active (fatigue) and punishment (pain) of movement "as if" there was disease. Actually, the disease is generated by an erroneous evaluation of disease, the stubbornness in defending the idea that fibromyalgia is a disease (in the classical way) when the pathogenic state is the mismanagement of a healthy brain "as if" the individual was sick.

The stress program does its job: alerting the individual from an uncoded new incidence, measuring it, evaluating it, giving it relevance, selecting the coping resources and proceeding to activate the most appropriate behavior. After the event, shutting down the program. Stressing out is not working too hard, but doing it with a continuous assessment of shock, threat, catastrophism, subjection to an unknown hierarchy... being helpless...  

The program of feeling depressed makes sense when the reality at that moment is averse and doesn’t offer a solution until either circumstances have changed or a recent negative event has been sufficiently ruminated and digested. Continuous assessment of helplessness, low self-esteem or other’s, in the objective absence of weakness or adversity of the surroundings, cancels the motivational resources and condemns the individual to inaction.

The catastrophist assessment makes sense when there has been a negative factor and must be analyzed to learn how to avoid it or deal with it properly in the future. Once the analysis is done, the reflective period is turned off and the individual gets his or her act together to work towards his or her goals.

- Your brain doesn’t manage the programs properly. It evaluates the organism’s state wrongly. It sees danger, failure, vulnerability, illness, frailty. That’s why you have symptoms... that is, programs ... They are on and should be off.

- I disagree. I'm sick.

- If you think so, you’re feeding your brain’s erroneous evaluations, which is bad.

- I was told that my brain has lost volume in the cortex. That doesn’t seem normal to me.

- The connections between neurons are cheered up with action and turned off with discouragement. Your brain’s cortex has thinned because it has no stimuli. They are discouraged. Pleasure is requisitioned.

Confusing the appearance of disease with actual disease is not harmless. Not considering the brain’s evaluative error as a pathology that must be fought with the restoration of the health belief is a mistake. Defending and claiming the disease condition of a healthy organism is not harmless.

"... migraine, fibromyalgia ... are mysterious illnesses without treatment ..."

When will there be a serious, rigorous consideration of that omnipresent and overflowing category of diseases of cultural mediation?

It doesn’t look good...

Pain and inaction

The function of perception is to focus, care for a theoretical or real content and propose an interaction. Perception is a proposition with a variable load of motivation to act in a certain way, with a purpose and significance (positive or negative).

Pain is a perception whose purpose is to force the individual to act defensively. If we contact with a noxious foreign agent or status, pain will force us to avoid it, to flee-fight. If the noxious agent or state is internal, pain pushes us to inaction, to suspend the planned activities.

Standing, walking, bending ... are actions that the individual requests to obtain purposes. The brain knows the intention, the desire of the individual and selects its proposal. If the individual's application doesn’t show any threat (real or theoretical) to physical integrity, the brain activates silent motor programs perceptively. We get up, we bend, we take things ... with nothing relevant in the execution. The individual’s request has received the brain’s approval. The action has been painless because the brain’s evaluative action has approved it without hesitation.

If there is a vulnerability assessment (theoretical or real) in an area of an individual's request for a given action-purpose, it can generate a cerebral fear of damage. The brain doesn’t approve it and perceptively projects fear (fear of injury) and pain (deterrent penalty) while it selects a defensive motor program with inadequate muscles. The individual perceives both cerebral projections: fear and pain, and proves that the action is inadequate, slow, painful, stiff ...

Pain has fulfilled its deterrent function. It has forced inaction. If despite the pain the individual decides to continue with its purpose, the pain will increase until it achieves its goal: to compel surrender. It stops acting in the individual’s desired direction and contributes to the inactivity of an area that is considered vulnerable.

Cerebral action of selecting and projecting pain perception in an area also contains a forecast of which actions of the individual are required to turn off the pain. If the brain requires a drug, there will be no relief until the individual performs the action to take it. If the brain requires relaxation, the individual must do it in order to make the pain go away.

Taking an analgesic is an action, something more than introducing a single molecule in the body. The brain calls for actions. Food doesn’t take away the hunger with molecules. Eating is an action that the brain requires by the projection of hunger perception. If you obey, the brain turns off the appetite.

We mustn’t always accept the brain’s proposals. We must learn to value them as rational and sensible or otherwise and act accordingly.

If the brain asks for inaction by an alarmist assessment, we must defend with arguments our willingness to act and get the brain to mute the perception of fear of harm (pain) and to organize the motor gesture with economic and quiet programs.

- Don’t move, don’t do it!

- Come on!

Hunger

Hunger is a perception of necessity, of encouragement to get something the organism is requesting, with or without justification.

We associate hunger with food but there is also hunger for air, hunger for salt, hunger for sweets. Actually, thirst is hunger for water.

Through hunger, the brain pressures the individual to look for whatever is requested. The objects of hunger, in natural conditions, are scarce or highly demanded and fought over by other species or individuals. There are neural circuits that promote hunger, exploration and supply.

The natural, biological, evolutionary tendency is to activate hunger when food, water, salt, sweet... are handy. The brain has evolved in an environment of disputed scarcity or abundance, and promotes the consumption when the object is within reach. Homo sapiens (ma non troppo) has hated hunger and has managed to grow food, water channeling, collecting salt, sweetening with no limits ...

Abundance with no rivals and no risk should produce appeasement of the circuits of hunger, but it doesn’t. Hunger is unleashed.

Hunger causes discomfort, restlessness, dissatisfaction, need, desire. If we obey the cerebral order of hunger, the system rewards us with the withdrawal of urgency. It takes away the hunger for food, for water, for salt or for fresh air. We interpret the relief as pleasurable, but really the pleasure consists on the suppression of urgency. It's like taking a small shoe off.

Hunger expresses the brain’s desire. The individual can give in and enjoy getting rid of the pressure (eating, drinking ...) or rebel and refuse to meet the requirements because of lack of need in the present and confidence in the future.

Pain has the essence of hunger. It's an extreme hunger. The reward system forces the individual to behave defensively. Pain expresses hunger for fear of injury, the need to stay still or run away, to move your legs when you want to keep them still ("restless legs syndrome") or to keep them still when you want to move. The brain requires nociceptive calmness. To achieve it, the brain activates the hunger for remedies, various spells: sedatives, massages, punctures, homeopathic products...

Hunger for air makes sense when we need as much oxygen as possible to escape danger or play sports, but the brain can see danger always and everywhere and activate the hunger for air at all times. The individual feels the uneasiness of hunger and needs to breathe deeply. If you disobey the hunger for air, it increases until a sigh momentarily relieves anxiety.

Dizziness is hunger for sitting still. Loneliness, hunger for relationships...

It is not easy to manage hunger, the pressure of the reward system. We succumb easily when it tightens the nuts. Snacks, soft drinks, sweets, salt, rest, painkillers, twitches, sighs...

Hunger must be obeyed when justified by real, current necessity states, and must be faced when there is no reason for it, just for fear of uncertainty.

In order to sooth hunger, own or others’ motor behaviors are required: eating, drinking, moving, being still, sighing ...

There is also hunger for smoking and the ritual requires a complex engine (taking out the cigarette, lighting it, putting it in the mouth, sucking and expelling the smoke, flicking the ash, putting it out ...)

- You haven’t smoked for some time. Why don’t you light another cigarette?

- No thanks, don’t turn on my hunger. I will ignore what you said. Smoking is toxic, addictive, misleading ... and increases hunger for smoking.

................

- You haven’t taken painkillers for some time...

Pain, at the bottom, consists on that: just one of the many hungers the brain gives us to calm down its probabilistic burdens, its fears, not always well based.

- Don’t insist on making me feel hungry... Leave me alone!

End of the episode

An episode is something that starts at a time, place and circumstance, has a particular relevance and then ends. The brain organizes reality in episodes, events framed in time and space and that mean something.

In the organism, there is a complex process routine that is exquisitely controlled. From time to time something unexpected happens. That something may be an adverse event: an infection, a tear, lack of oxygen ... There is cell death, necrosis. Alarms go off, defensive resources are mobilized. The area becomes inflamed, painful, hot, swollen, ruddy and out of order. Everything happens quickly. Every second counts. The deployment has mechanisms of positive feedback, of a haddock that bites its tail and grows. The priority is to end the state or agent responsible for necrosis. Necrotic cells are highly toxic and necrotizing. We must end them too. Once the necrotizing danger is controlled, repair comes. We must recover the damaged. It’s not always perfect, but the patches are effective and sufficient.

Pain protects the repair process. Once completed, pain becomes an obstacle. The tissues need activity to recover the normal condition and, in order to do that, the brain must remove the perception of pain, authorize and promote reuse, not penalize it. The danger has passed. Everything should go back to normal. End of the episode.

There are many necrotic episodes that trigger the acute phase reaction (inflammation) normally, but that leave the alarm on. The brain does not grant approval for the repair and continues penalizing the use. The pain is still there indefinitely in the form of a problem. The area is functionally seized with total disability. There isn’t any episode. There was a beginning but no end is granted.

- I have a herniated disc.

There was a time when the disc had been torn and the nucleus herniated, invading the space occupied by a nerve root. The alarms went off. It hurt, the joints were blocked, protector, alternative motor programs were activated,... but within days or weeks the site was reorganized, the necrotic remains were removed, the tear was mended and ready for the movement, necessary to restore function and architecture. Maybe the brain didn’t see it that way. It didn’t regain confidence and continues to deny the end of the episode, the license guarantees.

- Well, you had an episode of a herniated disc, but it is repaired, finished. You should move without fear. The recovery of the structure and function is not possible without movement. The acute-phase defense programs should be turned off. Your brain must know that losing a point joint between two vertebrae is not the end. Your brain should promote normality. Otherwise the lower back will become an absurd vicious circle.

- Yes, but it hurts, I'm locked, rigid, I can’t do anything.

- You are still in acute phase, as if your disc had just been ripped. It’s already cooled down, repaired. If you don’t go back to activity, purpose, confidence ... you will never go back to normal.

The management of defensive processes by the immune and nervous system contains the danger of poor regulation. An acute episode becomes chronic, not necessarily because it left  after-effects but because it hasn’t been considered as finished when it should.

Chronic pain is often a response of warn, triggered reasonably by an acute necrotic event that fear maintains unreasonably active. There is no physical vulnerability, but simply fear to going back to normal. The brain does not trust the repairs. It doesn’t event know they exist.

- You haven’t driven the car again.

- I have an accident

- Yes, but that was a few years ago and you brought it to the garage to have it repaired.

Citizens continue to use the present to tell about the real past and the imagined, feared future.

Talking to the brain

We talk to the brain continuously, inevitably. We project an assessment of what we feel and think, from our consciousness to ourselves.

- Talk to your brain. Project the confident conviction that nothing happens where it projects pain, danger ...

Many patients find this proposal absurd, ridiculous. They think that we defend the idea of a little person living inside of us.

- I already told the brain not to hurt but...

Intracellular and intercellular communication is a necessary condition for life. Without information there is no life. There is dialogue between intracellular components, between the cytoplasm and nucleus, between the cell and its immediate surroundings. Each neuron talks to itself. It takes multiple impacts of reality on the receptors of the membrane and generates a signal (action potential) that integrates all the mini-signals of all the contact points. Through the action potential, it releases chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) that transmit information from the neuron to others but also to itself. Depending on what the neuron tells itself through its own neurotransmitters, its excitability state changes. The neuron is an individual that talks to itself as well as with neighbors and the entire organism.

As the signals are processed in different centers and decisions are generated and expressed in the form of action potentials and neurotransmitters, the same dialog is produced between centers, with the neighbors and the organism.

When the cerebral process projects its results to the mysterious field of consciousness, the same re-entry of information is produced, the self-dialogue of the brain through the rebound from consciousness. The brain does not recognize himself as a conscious part until it receives the information, the realization that its processings have generated certain conscious contents. In visual perception, every cerebral center processes a different aspect of the objects: shape, location in space, color, movement ... Until the overall results come out to consciousness. The brain does not know what it is or where the object is. The brain of the shapes only knows that there is an object with edges of contrast in a certain direction, the direction of movement, that it’s something that moves quickly. The set of these elementary processes is produced when the report: “car” comes out to consciousness, and this result re-enters the network.

Consciousness (the conscious self) is the most complex level of processing. As there is a drift from the brain to the individual, this can be set to an attention position and open up the senses to the entry of information that makes it possible to modify brain assessments.

The object of pedagogy of pain (know pain, no pain) is precisely to introduce informative material in the brain-individual dialogue that modifies the decisions made from this dialogue.

Establishing a dialogue between the individual and the brain does not depend on the individual. This always exists. It’s about (given its existence) influencing its results, reinterpreting, re-evaluating, doing other attributions, removing and giving relevance.

Talking to the brain is not about verbalizing some kind of prayer, repeating magical sentences, commanding or begging. The individual must project its convictions and defend its program, not be intimidated by the pressure of the brain’s proposals to assess threat.

- Tell your brain, when it projects pain ...

Pain is a hypothesis in many cases, a probabilistic brain speculation. The individual should know for sure and project that conviction.

That's it.