Joanne Smith explains how the brain's alarm system can amplify pain signals beyond what the body actually experiences. People with chronic pain sometimes report intensity levels of 15 even though the physiological maximum is 10, describing it as worse than childbirth or kidney stones. If medical tests find nothing, the brain's overactive alert state might be the cause.
Your brain thinks there's danger. It turns on the alarm, the panic alarm, and it's loud and amplified up to the level 15, but really the top level's 10. So this is what's possible, and this is why people with chronic symptoms experience higher symptoms than anything on medical records. More painful than childbirth. More painful than— Cancer. Kidney stones or, um, what other things are supposed to be quite painful? Toothache! So, um, I mean, even tooth and dental pain, um, sits under the mind-body symptoms categories, um, if everything else has been ruled out. So let the— let your own alarm bells ring if you've had everything ruled out and nothing can be found. Please be open to this concept because this concept can change your, your future.
