How your brain can heal your body

But as he jumped off, a metal prong caught his corduroys, and as he fell, he heard three popping sounds: his thigh bone was cracking. When he hit the ground, the leg was at a 90-degree angle to the other one.

Immediately after the fall his pain was a true ten out of ten (ten is meant to be like being dropped in boiling oil), but then, as he lay motionless waiting for the ambulance, Dr Moskowitz felt no pain at all.

He was observing a medical phenomenon he'd taught his students about for years, but had never experienced. 'My brain simply shut off the pain,' he said.

'I had first-hand experience that the brain, all on its own, can eliminate pain, just as I, a conventional pain specialist, had tried to do for patients by using drugs, injections, and electrical stimulation.'

The brain can shut pain off because the function of acute pain is to alert us to danger. So, as long as Dr Moskowitz didn't move, he was in no danger, as far as his brain could tell.

In the aftermath of his accident, Dr Moskowitz nearly died three times. Yet as the years have passed, he's had very little pain in the leg.

He'd learned another pain lesson: the wise use of sufficient morphine had prevented his nerves from becoming over-stimulated and saved him from his acute short-term pain turning into the chronic, permanent variety.

For centuries the traditional view of pain was that nerves send a one-way signal up to the brain and intensity of pain is proportional to the seriousness of our injury. In other words, pain files an accurate damage report about the extent of the injury, and the brain's role is to simply accept that report.

(dailymail.co.uk)