479: The Neuroscience of Chronic Pain: Why Your Brain Gets Better at Creating Pain (And How to Teach It to Stop) with Ashleigh Di Lello

And I really believe that deep down inside, my spirit knew that I wasn't just sent here to die at 13 years old. And I really believe that's what I was accessing when they were telling me I needed to accept I was dying, there was a part of me that just didn't connect with that as being true.

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Oh, I'm so excited to be here, y'. All. Thank you for having me. Like I told you, I've followed you for a long time. Another life. I was a personal trainer, and, of course, that brought me into your realm. And I'm just so glad we got connected, and I'm glad you're doing better, and I'm excited to be here.

Thank you. Okay, I want to back up to your story, and I don't always usually start with people's stories because everyone's like, oh, here we go, another story. But your story is really, truly extraordinary. It is so powerful and just really unbelievable. Can. Can we back up? It's. And I don't even want to try to tell it myself, but if it's my understanding, you were. You were a dancer. That was how this journey started. Take us back to what happened, where you were in your life and this first experience with pain.

Yeah. So my body's always been my greatest tool. Right. And all of our to that is true to each of us. But for me, my greatest passion was dancing. I came out of the womb dancing, my parents said. So I started dancing five hours a day when I was seven years old. So being healthy was the most important thing to me. And my first health experience, I did go through two. One as a teenager, and then later in my 30s, as a mother. And at the height of my professional career, my first journey was actually I became deathly ill. So I was 13 years old, the epitome of health, dancing five hours a day. And I woke up one morning and could hardly move. And that was the first day of a four year journey where I fought for my life. And this was. We're talking about 29 years ago, you know, about. So it was a very different world. We have to think of the climate that existed then. None of this existed. Social media, podcasts, YouTube. It was a very different medical realm.

So you're a seventh grader when this was happening, basically. Seventh grader. And when you say you couldn't move, like paralyzed, couldn't move, or what was going on.

I did wake up and did have pain in every joint and muscle. It was like the worst type of flu, you know, if you've ever had that experience. And it hurt to move. I. I remember I was supposed to go into a dance conference that day, and I went into my mom's room and did like a very basic ballet floor plie, which everyone has seen. It's like A baby squat, right, with your feet turned out. And I couldn't even do it. The pain was so intense. I had a high, high fever. I was cold, but I was freezing. I mean, I was hot, but I was freezing. I had pain in my abdomen, shooting head pain. It was just like I went to sleep in one body and woke up in a completely different. And it was a nightmare. Even part of me thought, oh my gosh, this must be a horrible flu. But I'm gonna get over it, right? I was so, so healthy. But I remember we started doing all of these tests and I wasn't getting better. And I was going to all these specialists and no one could figure me out. And one day, I'll never forget it. I was at a top pediatric hospital. And the doctor came in and it was one of those really sterile rooms, you know, with nothing, nothing warm. I was in one of those old robes that would tear every time you moved, like those paper. And he pulled a stool up to the hospital bed and he said, you need to accept you're not going to live past your teenage years.

What?

Wow.

Wow. How do you even tell a 13? Like, I can't even imagine. You're 12, you're 13. Like, how do you even. How could he say something like that?

Yeah, it's mind boggling when I look back and reflect on it. They just literally all my tests showed I was dying. I had some rare viral infection no one could diagnose or treat. My organs were shutting down. I mean, I got. My hair fell out. I got down to 90po. My skin was yellow from my liver shutting down. I got so sick. There were days I couldn't even speak. It's crazy when you realize the energy it takes to actually speak or I didn't even have the energy some days to lift a finger. I mean, I know what it's like to be dying in your organs, shutting down. So I try to give some grace to where they were coming from. But yes, he looked at me and.

Said, and were you alone when he said this to you?

My mom was with me. My mom was with me. And I'm alive today, large part because she's amazing and a fighter. But I credit my mom. She gave me the opportunity to respond first. I can only imagine now as a mother, I would be all over that.

I would have attacked him. Don't say that to my child. So what did you say? What was even going through your head at that time?

I mean, in that one second, which felt like an eternity, I think I felt every Human emotion that exists and shock. And how in the world is this my life? How are we here? But all I knew in that moment was that if I accepted I was dying, then all chances of survival were gone. And so I just literally took probably the biggest deep breath of my life, and I looked at him and I said, I don't accept this.

How did you even have that knowing? Like, that's so impressive. You think like a sixth or seventh grader. Like, how did you have that knowing? Like, we don't. That's not a normal thought process.

Yeah. And I look now, and I look at my daughter, who's 11, and think about two years from now where I was. And the only thing that I can say is, one, I came into this world so driven. And I credit having a passion I loved so much that I was determined to succeed in and do. But also, faith has always been a big part of my life. Belief in God and a belief that we were sent here for reasons. And I really believe that deep down inside, my spirit knew that I wasn't just sent here to die at 13 years old. And I really believe that's what I was accessing. When they were telling me I needed to accept I was dying, There was a part of me that just didn't connect with that as being true. Even though reality validated what I was being told, deep, deep down inside, no matter how impossible it seemed, I just felt. Felt like my life was greater than 13 years.

What was actually. Did you have a diagnosis? Did they.

Did.

What was the thing that was going on in your body?

Well, and that's the crazy thing Again, this was 29 years ago. If you ever watched the TV show House on Fox, it was years ago. He always had all these patients that no one could figure out. That was me. My diagnosis was they knew I had a rare viral infection, but they couldn't diagnose it and therefore didn't know how to treat it. And they certainly tried a lot of things, but nothing was improving, nothing was shifting it. And that's why they essentially sent me home to die, not knowing what I had or what to do about it.

So before that moment when you had this, like, pivotal mindset thing, which is. I know it's going to be so relevant as we get on with this story here, but during that time frame, like, before that, what was your life? What was happening? Were you still trying to dance? Were you still going to school? Like, what was happening with your friends? Like, were you sleeping in that kind of pain? Like, what was your Life like during.

That, when it first started again, because I didn't think this was going to be such a long ordeal. Obviously, I was out of school for several months because it was quite severe when it hit. And then I would feel a little progression. And I. I was fighting to go to school, I was fighting to go to dance. And I kind of oscillated with that for about eight months until I remember one competition because I was a competitive ballroom dancer and my partner essentially kind of had to carry me off the floor. And that was the last day I danced for six years.

Wow.

And then that day forward, I wasn't in school for many years because I was just too sick.

And were you taking medications and what did your pain feel like? And what were you. How were you process? Were you depressed?

It's interesting. I definitely had my moments of feeling depressed, right? I was a teenager. I lost the love of my life. I loved school. I loved being a teenager. And now my life revolved around doctors and hospitals and medical treatments. And my partner waited for me for, like, almost a year. And then I had to say, I have to go find another partner. I don't know how to last. So I certainly had my moments of feeling depressed, right? Because when going through was hell on earth and I was so young and I had to grow up overnight, and my friends were around at first, but when you're ill for a long time, people don't know what to do. And especially at that age, like, my friends were not sure if I was going to die. They didn't really know what to say or what to do. And I think it was kind of scary to be around me because, frankly, for a long time there, I looked very, very sick. So it was very isolating, of course, and people were there at the beginning, but again, when it goes on and on and on, then people stop. And, I mean, I know they have their life, but then it's very lonely. I did have a doctor try to, well, many doctors suggest antidepressants, because, of course, what I was going through was so hard. And what was important to me was to acknowledge, yes, this is so hard. And I have my moments of feeling depressed and overwhelmed and angry and afraid, but I am not depressed, Meaning I experience that emotion some days. But I am also determined to change this. And I know that I need my mental faculties as much as possible to fight. I was in the fight of my life. And truthfully, that was part of what altered my experience in the future, because I was like, I'm a fighter there's no time for anything but fighting because my. My life was on the line. And so in many ways I didn't allow any other emotions. And that wasn't per se healthy. But even if I had a day, I wanted to cry. I was like, nope, you don't have time for this. You got to reserve your energy for fighting. And so that kind of dominated every other emotion because I felt like I had only limited energy to put in either what I wanted and willing my body to keep fighting because that's what I did. I had nights I wouldn't even go to sleep. I was afraid if I went to sleep and surrendered my conscious will to live, my body wouldn't make it to the morning.

So one thing I've learned, and this is definitely your expertise, not mine, just my own experience, is I noticed that there's a certain type of personality that tends to. And I know this is a huge generalization, but I notice in my age group there's a certain personality that tends to get injured or have pain or. And there's like this type a nervous system, wired personality. I just, again, based on nothing other than my own personal experience and what I'm putting together and learning and that same personality goes into, I'm going to fix it all. I'm going to fix it all. Which creates more do, do, do, do, do. And it's like the opposite of kind of surrender. And I have this theory that like, it kind of keeps us in that. I wanted to bring that up right now because I don't know if I'm so far off or this is going to tie in, but I wanted to bring that part up right now.

I love that you did. It's something I talk about all of the time. And let me just, before I say this, let me premise that we're talking about physical pain. But the brain reacts almost similarly to physical and emotional pain and all the things come into account and how that stress response manifests to us. So for me, illness and pain. For others, it's anxiety, it's depression, it's overwhelm, it's procrastination. So it's the same manifestation of stress that's happening in the brain and nervous system, but it looks different. So even though I'm talking about pain and illness, know that this is equally applicable to any type of mental or emotional.

Because when I heard the term, the word, the pains, addictive, I was like, huh? But it's starting. It's kind of coming full circle to me because when I had that original conversation with my friend who did my DNA and he said, natalie, you're missing it. The same reason you keep getting injured is all connected. Like that same personality puts you in the spot that other people wouldn't be in. So, yep, just kind of coming full circle. And I think why you resonate or why you resonated so much with me here.

Yeah. So let's talk about that because I'm sure a lot of your audience, very much so across the line with mental and emotional and physical stuff, we find a lot of Type A. I would say nearly most of my clients fall in that category. And again, there's a beautiful aspect of it, right. They're the people to not give up. They're the people to find answers and solutions. I certainly wouldn't be alive today without that aspect of it. But I also had to learn how to do it differently.

Right.

I never would have studied neuroscience and created a process to rewire the nervous system if I wasn't that type of driven person who said, I can't find the answer outside of me, so I'm going to create it. Like, I'm not going to believe this is the rest of my life. I don't get to walk and I live in pain the rest of my life. So the good part of it, right, is one reason we're here. The other side is people who are type A and highly driven tend to also be hypercritical. Right. Nothing's good enough. It's all or nothing. We know from scanning the brain that that type of hypercriticalness activates the brain's internal alarm bells, its fight or flight system, and it actually therefore then sends stress hormones to our body. Right. And when we're living in that place, really most of our life in one way or the other, because we're driven, we got to go Type A, we are essentially living in our fight or flight mechanisms all the time, constantly sending stress hormones that puts us in our sympathetic nervous system, which doesn't have a lot of resources it was meant to tap into and come out of. But when we're constantly tapping into it and staying there, then we are taking our resources to heal, to recover. And that breakdown eventually starts to show up physically, mentally or emotionally because it's not sustainable and the brain and body know that. So they start to put breakdown somewhere to try to get our attention.

Do you think. And maybe this is connected or not, but do you think that it's almost like a distraction? Like if you. That personality and you don't. You're not really, maybe in tune with your emotions or you don't want to be or it's too painful or whatever. Is it almost like a distraction? Like, oh well, I can focus over here. I can focus on this pain or this problem as a distraction or is that like far off of what you're talking about?

No, it's, it's both. There's, there's a nuance here. Whatever we focus on, the brain magnifies. Like that's, that's just the truth of our experience. People who are also type A tend to not have self compassion of allowance of. This is what I'm experiencing. This is what is impacting me. Let me just at least look at it, allow it. It's like I said to my experience, I don't have time for that. We got to be a fighter. You got to figure this out. And so what we know is again that emotional impact of life. And it doesn't matter how strong you are, you've had a life that has impacted you and altered you. We're not robots. So whether or not we acknowledge it, it stores in our body. Our body speaks emotionally and it will hold on to the pieces that we won't compassionately allow. And that then accumulates and contributes again to the breakdown that happens. Because our brain and body know the amount of stress it takes to hold things in. Things that have impacted us, things that have altered us, things we haven't processed. And so their way to get our attention is in stress signals. And again that could be more mental, emotional or physical.

So back to that little girl that was diagnosed or not diagnosed but was experiencing this, this horrible virus, that there was no answers. And I want to ask you kind of how you came out of that and then what happened next. But do you think looking back, knowing what you know now, and maybe I'm oversimplifying, but that you were putting all this pressure on yourself as a dancer and in that personality, that this was like your body's way of saying no, like slow this down.

I don't. And this is where I know it's an important discernment. Because one thing you and I talked about pre recording was how we can swing the pendulum too far. So I was definitely a type A, but I was happy, I successful. I wasn't like stressed. I was just driven. I loved life. My parents would be like, do you want to take a break from dance? And I remember being like, why?

Because it was fun for you. It was free. It wasn't stressful.

Nope. It was total self choice, self driven. I Loved school, I loved life. I was happy and my nickname was Energizer Bunny. Like I didn't nap as a kid because I didn't want to miss out on life. Like there. So there. This is where sometimes with the work that I do today, people will ask and I'm glad you brought this up well, do you believe that caused that illness? And this is where the discernment is so important. We are human. We do live in physical bodies as well. And they get sick and they get injured and they have breakdown and I contracted a virus. I got sick and it nearly killed me. What matters is I'm glad I had that personality because I could have died. And I literally felt like I had the choice, I was so sick. And we know that stories where people surrender and they're like, it's time now. And they, they die. I felt like I had that choice and instead I kept willing my body to fight what impacted me. That was a contributor to what happened later in life when, yes, I got injured, yes, I had to have surgeries, but the way my brain and nervous system responded to that was very much driven from the memory of fighting for my life for four years and that lack of safety that I didn't have in my body anymore. Right. My body in underlying. Even though we were a team and we survived, I didn't really trust it because I had to will it. I felt like to keep living and that was part of why I kept getting injured in my professional dance career. That why when I had a failed surgery that started this whole cascade of chronic pain, my brain was cross referencing what I'd gone through when I was younger and the hyper protection and awareness around my body and those deep alarm bells got really activated of oh my gosh, here we are again, danger, danger, danger. And my brain went into survival mechanisms on overdrive, which took the pain and dysfunction that I was having to a whole new level because of what I'd gone through when I was younger and because I hadn't allowed myself to really process the experience. I had a lot of PTSD around my body and my health that I literally hadn't looked at, really wasn't willing to acknowledge because I was like, I'm better now. Let's live life, go after my dreams. And that was what greatly impacted that I had to deal with later.

So I want to talk about what happened next, but I want to close the loop on the child with the virus that you, you basically told the doctor, I'm not accepting this. What changed then? Like, how did you heal yourself from that chapter.

Yeah. So, long story short, after running out of anything in the western medical field, I remember 29 years ago it was a very different climate. We out of desperation moved more to holistic alternative, which nowadays is more mainstream. Back then it was very voodoo, you know, and non conventional. And I come from a medical family, but we were like, we'll do whatever to get well. And so of course we dove into nutrition and it was like everything I ate became life or death. It was like, does this help my immune system?

Yeah.

Right. So I became very strict in what I was eating because I needed to give my immune system every chance. We dove into supplements and homeopathic medicine and all those modalities again back then where people were like, what are you doing? And literally everything I did to treat the physical body and the communication within myself was to give my body every chance possible to have my immune system fight this virus. And it was a four year battle before I was no longer in teetering on life or death. And then it took six years to have enough strength to go back to dance.

Wow. When you look back now and I know I'm not, that's a long time span, you know, the four or six years. But if you, if you were to like kind of from a high level say what fixed you there, would you have said it was a combination of your belief and focus and then like nourishing your body? Like, do you, is that how you would explain it and, or what would you?

Absolutely, absolutely. It's both. You know, and again, I think we can swing the pendulum too far. I never put limits. I've healed things in my body that medically are not possible.

I believe that. Yeah.

And I have and I've had diagnoses and I've had the scans and all of that. So there's no discounting that the brain is the command center of the body. The brain is our most powerful weapon in either healing or getting more sick. And our body needs support. So you can't just overcome what you're not willing to also support the body in because the nervous system is a feedback loop between both. So I can have a really strong feedback from my brain to my body. But if my body needs nutrients, it needs supplements, it needs good food, it needs a surgery, it needs a procedure. The body is going to keep sending stress signals back to the brain. Hey, I need you to fix this. Hey, I address this. I'm trying to heal, but I don't have the resources that I need or hey, I'm Trying to heal, but you're feeding me inflammatory foods all day. Like, how am I supposed to do my job? So it is both.

So me being like the health. I describe myself as like a health detective. I get obsessive on that. From a high level, it sounds like you. You had some type of autoimmune that was obviously attacking your body and you cleaned up everything and you believed it would work. That's like a key component. I think people skip like you. It's because I think no matter what you choose, it's your belief that something's hurting or helping you. And by eating anti inflammatory. I do believe in the case of autoimmune, there's a huge, huge shift that can happen there. I mean, you could take some. I have two autoimmunes, and that's why I say that. But you could take someone even with severe like rheumatoid arthritis or whatever. And it's. I'm not saying it's the end all, be all, but there's a big difference where their brain goes and the way that they're eating and how that manifests in their bodies. I see that. So I would imagine you still, till this day even. We haven't even talked about the second thing that happened to you. But till this day, do you still eat that way? Do you still treat your body like, I'm not gonna have an autoimmune or I'm not gonna do that? You've carried that on.

I do. And it's interesting because it's not rooted in fear at all.

Yeah.

It's rooted in. In love. Yeah. And that journey, because people say, oh, you have to. And I'm like, no, I actually don't have my body so healthy. But I've also know that my greatest gift is health. That's our most gift on this earth is health. Because it's what allows us to feel that everything. And so it is my appreciation for this body that has fought like hell right alongside me. It's a gift I give myself not just for my physical health, but every other aspect. Because if I feel great, then my life is exponentially better. So it's. It's not. I'm not obviously as rigid as those four years when I felt like food was life or death. But I'm. I'm very, very disciplined and have been for a long time. It actually feels like I have the greatest freedom because I understand that for myself and my life. And I just feel my best, you know, I want to feel my best. So I am. But I think what's really important, I think at once upon a time, I would say it was rooted in fear of not getting sick again. And that was a big part of things I needed to heal. And now I trust my body. It is resilient, it is healthy. And I just do it because I want to. I want to feel my best, and I want to thank my body and give my body the resources to do its best and my brain right. Because our brain equally needs good fuel to function and optimize all of the things it's in charge of. The one thing that I will say, what then will segue to the second. What brought me to my work is in my second health experience. I had everything online. My nutrition was perfect, my supplementation was perfect. Every biohack you can think of, every regulating tool, because people are familiar with regulating the nervous system. What I do is rewiring the nerves. Yeah, nervous, Very different. But I had everything perfect on paper, and I still wasn't getting well. So that's where a lot of people find themselves, is they're reading the body in every way possible. Why aren't I feeling better? Why is my inflammation still the same? Why aren't I improving? Or why is my mental health not improving? And that's when we really, really have to look at the brain and nervous system.

Yeah, I agree. And I know this is my actual problem right now, so I'm putting myself out there. I see that with myself because I'll do the external things. I know many of my listeners do, too. I tend to attract that personality. Right. You do all the things like check it off, like, oh, I'll order that thing and I'll do that, and I'll do. I'll make sure my day is scheduled to do. But unless we're addressing that part, we're not actually fixing the core problem, and things will keep popping up. So tell us about what happened next. Like, this was a big, big pivot that then really shaped your work and your life. If you've listened to my podcast for any amount of time, you know, there's been lots of guests and lots of talks where we've chatted about what to eat, getting enough protein, eating healthy, the importance of it, why we want to eat organic. But I want to share that as we age, it's not just what we eat, it's what we digest. Even if we eat super healthy, clean, organic food, we can still not have the best digestion. You see, our natural ability to digest food declines with age. This is because your body produces fewer enzymes, which are the proteins responsible for digesting food. And when you have fewer enzymes, this means more difficulty digesting our food. So even organic, healthy or what you think are perfect foods won't provide enough enzymes to properly digest them. So this is especially true if you cook your food, which most of us do, because cooking kills the enzymes. So if you've ever wondered why you might have digestion problems even after having a healthy meal, it's because your body just can't produce enough of the enzymes to get the job done. So this is where supplementing with high quality enzyme supplements can be a huge help. So I personally use and recommend a specific digestive stack from bio optimizers which includes their mass Zymes, which is a best in class supplement loaded with full spectrum enzymes for digesting proteins, starches, sugars, fibers and fats. So when you take this enzyme daily, and I personally take them with each meal and replace the enzymes your body is no longer producing, you're able to eat all sorts of things and digest them quickly without the bloating, without the feeling, you know, puffy, without the leaky gut issues, all of that. So when you digest your food properly, you're actually getting all of the nutrients. So I've got an exclusive offer for all of my listeners if you go to biooptimizers.com NatalieJill again bioptimizers.com NatalieJill you can also use coupon Natalie Jill to save. You'll see my recommended stack which includes the mastimes, the HCL and the probiotic.

Yes. So I fought my way well, had an amazing professional dance career and did Broadway, eight shows a week, which was miraculous. And TV shows like so youo Think youk Can Dance, Dancing With Stars. I mean it was like miraculous. And I was at the top of the mountain. And through that though I had a lot of injuries. I've injured about every part of my body. So I had to keep fighting back to stay in my career because I didn't understand what was happening. Nervous system that was driving a lot of this breakdown. But I kept fighting, right? And I was at the height of our professional career. I'd come back from one hip surgery I'd had on my right hip and then I needed to do my left hip and a lot of that was genetic. I was, I was born with my femoral head misshapen, which I didn't know. But of course, giving the degree of physical activity that I had, it created issues. So I thought, well, okay, I've done it with My right hip.

So it was a hip replacement or what was that?

Not a replacement. A labral repair.

Okay.

Completely torn my labrum. And they had to do an osteoplasty, reshape the femoral head.

So you did one. And it was all fine. Everything was good. So you're ready?

Yeah. And I pushed it. By the time I had that surgery, I was afraid I had pushed it too far. I tore my labrum. We were doing Broadway, eight shows a week. I was barely walking. But somehow dancing in a two hour show. You know how.

Yep, I get that.

Yes. So adrenaline serves us and helps us to do things we probably shouldn't. Right. But that surgery was hard. You know, I had to learn how to walk again. It was a journey. But eight months later, I was back in my career. And so when everything happened with the left, we knew, because I tried to do everything to not have surgery, but I. I knew I had to fix it because I'd gone on that journey with my right. My daughter was 2 years old at the time. We were still traveling. My husband was my professional partner. She was coming with us. We also wanted more children. And you have to wait at least a year after the surgery before even trying because of all the pressure through the hip. So I was like, okay, well, we'll just do this. I've done it before, and this one failed. It went very wrong. I knew even when I woke up, something was not right. And then as I.

What does that mean? It failed. Like, what does that Meaning?

Meaning I lost the ability to walk from it. Meaning pain that I went in was exponentially worse after. So when I tried to rehab, when I tried to start weight bearing, my body wouldn't let me. It was. It was. There was something so drastically wrong with my hip. And the pain skyrocketed when I tried to come off crutches. And I was very diligent in my rehab. It was like my full time job because obviously my career was.

And this was the same surgeon, same procedure. Just it's the paperwork we signed, the very rare, rare, rare thing.

Different surgeon.

Oh, different surgeon. Okay.

Interesting story. That's with all the shifts in healthcare. Anyway, my surgeon was out of state my first one. And with the shifts that happened with healthcare, it was very hard to cross state lines and. But I went to a top surgeon who mostly just works on athletes. Yeah, right. So did my due diligence. He obviously has a good reputation for a reason. I mean, surgery, you know, there's always a risk too, you know, so it just started this journey of doing everything possible and, you know, doing MRIs and talking to my surgeon. But then the pain that started in my hip and SI joint spread all the way up my spine. So I had unbelievable nerve pain through my entire spine, my neck. I could hardly look down. It felt like it was breaking. I had nerve pain all through my brachial plexus, which is some of the greatest nerve area in your body, from your neck to your thoracic spine and your shoulder, where literally there were days I want to cut it off. The pain in the hip and all the fascial connection that happened there caused me to have unbelievable pelvic and bladder pain. So I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis and pelvic syndromes and chronic regional pain syndrome, eventually fibromyalgia, because I had pain in about 10 areas with my body.

And it is the most consuming thing when we feel that in our bodies. I can't even imagine. You had way more than the worst type of hell.

I'll just say right now, I have fought for my life. And while I was grateful, I wasn't dying, chronic, unrelenting pain is the worst hell.

Yes.

Because there's no moment of relief. There's no escape. You're hardly sleeping. There's not one moment where you're with your family or trying to watch a movie or read a book where you have a break. And you cannot have that type of physical pain without a deep emotional and mental pain. Entire life is altered and impacted, and the things you love to do, you no longer can do. No moment of relief. And so with what I'd gone through before, I'm like, okay, we've got this, you know, and we're doing everything possible. They can't see anything in an mri. So according to the mri, at least what they could see, that the surgery was successful, which just didn't make sense. I kept saying, there's something wrong here, but I started everything. Like I said, everything was perfectly dialed in. I mean, western, eastern, alternative, regenerative, holistic. I mean, you name it, I did it. I had over 200 types of injections, stem cell PRP. I took bone marrow out of my good hip to put in the other hip. I mean, I felt like a masochist. I was paying all this money to endure these pain treatments to try to help my pain, you know, putting needles in my nerves and sending electromagnetic pulses through it. And meanwhile, of course, we're just going through all of our financial resources, and.

I'm sure you're trying. I Mean, they literally have like two nerve medicines, Lyrica and Gabapentin, which have side effects. So it's like there's, there's not a lot of answers when. And you've got that kind of pain.

And they didn't even help me.

Yeah.

And that wasn't, of course, my long term solution. But I remember even one night out of desperation, I was like, I need to try to sleep more than two to three hours. So I was rummaging through my pantry trying to find my oxycontin that I had left over from surgery. And I remember taking it and just sitting there waiting for something to happen. And 45 minutes later, an hour and a half later, two hours later, nothing. And that was just such a scary moment when you realize not even some of the most powerful pain medicine is making a dent. And so then I started having other health issues because I was sleeping two to three hours a night and my daughter's two. I can't even hold her, I can't pick her up. We lost our professional career at the height of our career. And my husband was still doing things, but we're partners, we're ballroom dancers, so it was both of us. It's just incredibly stressful. And after doing everything again, one day I looked at my husband and I'm like, there's no treatment left. There's literally no modality or treatment left that we haven't explored. And that night was probably the closest I've ever been to just literally almost losing my fight and like giving up. They're telling me this is my life. The doctor told me that one of the top leading pain specialists told me it was downhill from here, gave me my fibromyalgia pamphlet and sent me on my way. Right. Pain is my life now. And that night, I remember just lying on the floor, I was rocking back and forth trying to get through the pain and I thought, well, what if I just give up? This is so hard on my family. We're bankrupting ourselves. And I sat in that truth of what if I just accept this? And I'm very grateful that that 13 year old girl, you know, she really reminded me not accept limitations. And I had this thought, well, what are they collectively saying? Well, they're saying my nervous system flipped a switch into pain. I'm going to figure out how to flip it back. And that next day I dove into neuroscience and studied it relentlessly, day in, day out. And thankfully my type of a personality and I was a nerd, did serve me again in this way. And we'll talk about the other way. I had to shift, but I was determined and knew that we had. I had to rewire the nervous system. And that's when I started to understand pain and anxiety and everything else has to be seen through this biopsychosocial lens of how our whole life has altered our brain and nervous system and how it's taking everything into account on when and where and how to send these stress signals. And that's when I had realized that my memory of my illness and my type A and how I'd lived and that lack of trust with my body and my PTSD was greatly impacting how my brain and body were reacting. The surgery failed. We'll talk about that. I eventually had to fix my hip. There was two surgeons in the world who could do it. They left a hole in my hip cap capsule. So clearly my whole structural integrity of my body was off and my body was sending those signals. But the violent way in which my brain then reacted was not just driven from what was happening physically, but my life and what I had gone through and how important my body was to my livelihood. So even for you, perception is everything when it comes to stress signals and to pain. So when you are hurt, it's more significant to your brain because of what you do for a living and the things you love and how active you are than someone else who isn't active and maybe has a desk job. You could have the same problem in your spine. But their brain might not react with so much pain because the meaning of their body doesn't hold such a significance.

Makes total sense.

And so all of that comes into play with how and how severe our brain sends these stress signals. Pain signals, anxiety, so forth. So that's when I started to realize I gotta unravel a lot of pieces to start to shift this. Plus, I'll let you say this. The thing with pain is it's neuroplastic. So our brain gets better at whatever it practices. And we know that that's how we develop and mastery and skill. But that's also how we get stuck in chronic stress cycles. So if you practice anxiety long enough, your brain will get really, really good at it. If you practice pain long enough, those pain receptors get larger, stronger, they become more sensitive. So a smaller stimulus activates them, and those neural connections get less specific. So where the pain signals were first sent to one area of the body, they start sending them to others. And that's in large part why pain gets worse and it spreads, not just because we're damaged, broken, and we have no hope. But what is happening in the brain, that's a lot.

That's a lot to unpack right here. This is, it's a lot. No, it's, it's. It's making sense. It's a lot.

How? What?

How I had this, a weird experience. I'll just, I'll just throw this out here. So in that moment of like having this crazy nerve pain in my. And like it consumes me and knowing I'm about to go speak and I'm like my legs and nerve pain. If any of you listening have had it, you know what we're talking about. But if you haven't, it feels like stabbing and burning at the same time. It's like it's. And it does not shut off. And if you're sleeping or not moving, it's even worse. So the only thing that maybe takes a little edge off is to be walking or moving. And it's, it's just, it's horrendous that you don't get a break from it. And I was consumed by that. And I just know. And I can't tell you exactly what I listened to her, but it's right when I started looking at your stuff and I got my mind focused somehow in a different place. And the next day, if I checked in with the pain, it was still there. I wasn't experiencing it the same. That's the only way I can explain it. Which told me nothing got fixed from one day to the next other than my focus. And it was my only taste of what you're talking about. But I saw this connection right then that if I could do that in a one day period, what's possible if you practice that consistently. So I don't even know if that made sense what I just said, but that was my glimpse of this is a possible thing.

Yeah, I love that you experienced that because it's the foundation of my whole process. Like this is the first step and then there's many that come after that really then help to rewire it. But what I always say and what we don't understand is it's not just the pain you feel. It's not just your anxiety that you feel, it's your response to it that magnifies it. And here's where. Let's give ourselves some grace. Of course, when we're in pain like our. We don't want it. It's awful, it's scary. How am I supposed to do what I'm supposed to do? So we're focusing on it, we're resisting it, we're fighting it. We have fear and panic around it. Well, we know emotions create biological and neurochemical processes in the body. So when we react and respond to what we're experiencing with heightened emotions, with fear, with overwhelm, with all degree of emotions, depression, so forth, the brain then goes, oh, my gosh, I need to focus on this. This is not just hurting you physically, it's hurting you emotionally. And we know that the brain perceives those identically. The brain cares just as much about our emotional sense of safety as it does our physical. So the brain goes, okay, how does the brain protect us? It sends stress signals.

Yeah.

So the brain starts to hyper focus on this thing that our reaction to is becoming a greater threat to the brain. So now the brain sends those stress signals in response to it, and it amplifies it. And now our reaction to it starts to. To become part of that stress cycle. Right. We feel it, we respond to it. The brain feels a threat around it, the brain sends more stress signals, our stress signals get worse, and that's. That whole cycle gets solidified. So the first thing that we do to start to disrupt that is shift how we react to it. And that's sometimes just not focusing on it. That's recognizing, okay, this isn't just necessarily damage. This is also signs of my brain's internal alarm bells that are going off. And if I can start to respond differently with not so much fear, overwhelm, defeat, then my brain starts to lower its threat response, which then it says, oh, I don't need to maybe heighten what you're feeling, and things start to calm down.

That makes total sense. And like, I think back to that day where I was. I remember walking to go speak and having this, like, playing in my head. And what was playing in my head was not just the pain. It was like, my career is over. Like, it was like literally everything you're just saying here. This is like, I'm not the same person anymore. Like, just all of that. And then even connecting the dots with sometimes medication affects that. Like, I know at the time I was on Celebrex for two weeks because that was what they give with the kind of disc replacement I have for two weeks just to. And it was a high dose. And that in some people can make depression, which then focuses more on pain. So there's a lot of variables there that I think we all need to look at when you're experiencing physical pain. Like where, like what you said, where am I focused, but am I, is there anything external I'm doing that's changing my brain chemistry? And then the shifting the focus is key. The other thing I noticed was when is in those few weeks that I had so much pain. There was one person that if she called me my daughter who's like, you know, she's my daughter, right. I noticed talking to her, I didn't, I was like talking about her drama or her problems or whatever. I wasn't thinking about my pain and I'm like, so I also had that experience of like, wow, that's another example of shifting focus. But if I'm not talking to her, I'm back on myself. And so I just, I had these little glimpses of what you're talking about.

And what you also said is it wasn't just that moment your brain was doing what it does. It's a predicting machine. It wanted to predict what your future would look like. And that was now. I'm not the same. My life is over as I knew it, right? What about my career? That's what the brain does. It likes to predict. But then you think about all that stress that was being and released into your body at that moment, which then is going to magnify whatever stress you're feeling, which is the pain. And now the brain goes, oh my gosh, this pain is a huge threat. It's going to change and shift your entire life and just baseline. Remember, as complex as this all is, whatever the brain has a threat around, it will send stress signals.

To talk about nervous system for a minute here, and I know you dug deep into neuroscience and nervous system is this, everybody needs to be aware of this. Is this a certain profile of person? Like, and why don't we talk enough about nervous? I mean we make these expressions like so and so got on my nerves. But we don't, we don't really talk about nervous system. Can you help us understand that?

Yes. First, this absolutely is something everyone should be aware of. And yes, your more type A driven people are the ones that are more susceptible to the breakdown physically, mentally, emotionally. So everyone should be aware. But yes, those people, they're the ones that tend to have a worse type of experience just because the buildup in large part we haven't talked about it because we haven't really been able to study the brain in the last really decade. We now really can map the brain in a way we never were before. When people are alive, right? And we can see the impact and for a long time nervous system and the impact on it was really isolated to PTSD with soldiers or a very specific trauma. Abuse versus just let's look at how we know the nervous system takes account into your whole life. And that's where we have to look at a lot of people who actually are diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which are predominantly women. They have a high prevalence of previous abuse in some way, physically, mentally or emotionally that they've survived and gone through. But the body holds that impact. And then enough stress compounds through life and then pain will show up. Right. Or people are like, I was fine. And then anxiety showed up. And now the nervous system, which is that communication between the brain and the body. You have the brain, which is a data bank of your whole life, Everything you've ever gone through, the more challenging or emotionally charged something was the brain takes a snapshot and it embosses it neurologically and it holds onto it and it goes, I need to remember this. So nothing similar happens again. So your brain is constantly looking at your environment, your life, and going, is this a threat? Based on what I've gone through in the past, and based on that determines whether the brain sends stress signals or not. So you have the brain doing that and sending it to the body, but then you also have the body who holds the emotional impact. Like the body speaks emotionally. We know that. We've all said, oh, I feel sick to my stomach. Right, you feel it physically. Oh, it's been such a stressful day. Oh, I've got pain in my shoulders and my neck. I've got a headache. So then you have the body, which holds the memory and especially the emotions that we didn't process, the emotions that we judged, criticized, shamed, suppressed, didn't honor. And of course, the body holds the impact of your life and injuries and your biodiversity and your genetics and your DNA and those parts that also make each of us more susceptible to different breakdown. Right. So you have that feedback loop from both happening and enough things happen in life that compound and compound and this alteration happens where either you had chronic stress for a long time, you had had trauma, you had a chronic illness, or. Or literally just conditioning over time. We kept operating at that high achiever, type A, all or nothing, go, go, go, don't allow ourselves to rest. Or again, like I said, whatever you practice. So someone who, worst case scenario, practice those thoughts, leans into them. Yeah, they're gonna develop anxiety and eventually panic because their brain's getting better at that. Whatever we've practiced or experienced, experienced over long periods of time, it doesn't matter who you are, they're altering your nervous system. And if we don't access that and move through it and acknowledge it and shift things, then your brain and body will scream to get your attention.

So you will.

And that's really the root of a large amount of our mental and emotional stress. And the physical symptoms that don't have a clinical clear, like, oh, I injured this. This is why I have it. It's because of what's happening in the nervous system. And it's been tipped into this hyper vigilant, overly sensitive, overprotective setting based on your life. And so it's sending stress signals so you'll finally do something about it.

So I got a lot of questions about what you do about this or how, because where my brain first went was, that same personality that you're talking about also tends to turn to supplements. Supplement. And I don't just mean like healthy supplements. I mean, like, they'll supplement with a prescription or alcohol or THC or whatever. And is that helping or hurting? Because I'm, I'm like, I'll hear my women say, well, I drink a glass of wine to unwind, but is that masking? Because that's not. And, and they, they'll argue, well, is it better to be the feeling the other things or to mask with that? And so. And I don't know the answer. Like, I. I guess that's what I'm asking you now.

Well, I think like anything, there's some nuance in it that might seem subtle, but it's significant. I used to even do this with exercise because I was a trainer and it was my love. It was my avenue back to dancing. I was so weak after I was sick, I couldn't even lift a weight. Strength training was how I got my life back again. But people even say exercise is my drug. And to that I would say, well, of course there's physiological benefits of exercise and what it's doing to the body. But if you get depressed, if you can't exercise, if you can't take a day off, then you are obviously ignoring things that are going inside to where you have to do it to function. And that's where the nuance are, right? I mean, I love exercise, right? It's a passion, it's a patient. People love unwinding with wine or doing something else. But the question is, is if it's something you have to do to feel operational in your life or to relieve stress, then we're ignoring pieces that need to be looked at and either processed or shifted. Because that's why so many people, when they get injured, they go in massive depression. It's not just that they can't exercise, it's that there's a lot of other pieces that exercise, it was helping them kind of massive deal with neurochemically even from what exercise creates that now we're having to look at and are coming to the surface.

And then what about the opposite? Like, so that same personality tends to turn to like more stimulant stuff. So caffeine or maybe they're doing, I don't know, whatever. Like it's the energy drinks or the stuff like that. Is that creating a worse problem too? Because then you're ramping more of that energy up.

Well, and again, I think it's the balance of how much you're relying on it. Because do not get me wrong, I really appreciate and love my pre workout. I'm not here to judge people and I do take a more natural one that is healthier and green tea based because definitely those can cross the line of health. But I'll be the first to say I really love and appreciate what that does for my workouts. But it's like anything, if you're constantly exhausted and you're having to constantly caffeinate or stimulate, then at that point you're ignoring signals from your body. And our body and brain will talk quietly at first. They'll give us signals and if we keep ignoring, they'll get louder and louder until they scream to get us to do something. And that's where exhaustion can literally be the body and brain trying to just get you to slow down. Pain can get you to stay still because you can't just go, go, go, go. You know, anxiety is your brain's trying to get you to alert to something that you need to deal with. But then it starts going into every area of our life. So it's always what is the reliance on it and what are we doing so that we can optimize how we're feeling without it? Like can we use it? Can we unwind because we appreciate it? Can we use our pre workout because we like what it does to our workouts? But can we function in our life? Can we be alone with ourselves? Can we rest when our body is telling us to? Can we quiet our mind? Like what, what is the reliance on to just keep going versus what are we using? Because we might appreciate it or enjoy it? And I think that's the nuance.

So if you were to check in with your body right now, like you personally and force your brain to focus on the hips or the pain, Would it, Would it come back?

So I really believe I've rewired. I. I mean, I don't believe I know because I've. I rewired those pain pathways and I rewired my trust. But I'll tell you, it's very interesting. I. About two months ago, because I had a hip surgery. Like I said, I had to have that hole healed. And it was a whole capsular reconstruction. It wasn't even an insurance coat. It was a new surgery I had to pay totally out of pocket for. Was quite a journey. It was a two year plus recovery. I am now six years after that, and I'm still getting stronger. I barely walked for five years. I had unbelievable atrophy and. And I had to retrain my nerves and muscles everywhere. But so I'm still getting stronger. Right. Because I still want to stronger. And I did something that irritated my hip in June, probably stretched the capsule. And what was so interesting is I saw again, which I already know, the power of my work, because neural pathways are a memory. So pain now is a memory. What we've experienced in the past, the brain can access instantaneously because it's a neural memory. So I irritated my hip, I did something it didn't like or just stretched tissues. But rather than saying, oh, I'm sore because I irritated it enough, it accessed those old pain pathways to say, ashley, I don't like this. Ashley, you really did something that I don't like. So I'm not just gonna send soreness. I'm gonna access that pain that I know will get your attention. And because I lived in that pain for five years, I can.

Wow.

So in that moment, and this was back in June, which I haven't experienced this in years, my brain accessed those pain pathways, and in one second my brain was like, oh, my gosh, what did you do? Did you undo your surgery? Do you have to start all over and your surgeon's retired now and like, what. What does this mean? Oh, my gosh, it's nine years down the toilet. Like, I mean, and my brain's doing this without my consent. Right, Right. So I'm. I'm seeing this happening in a nanosecond and going, oh, my gosh, okay. And I could feel the pain amplifying because of all of that going on. And I had to do all my work that I do with my clients. But that first started with the pain is not always indicative of damage. I did not. I had to Logically, go. I did not undo my surgery.

Yeah.

I did something that could have caused this type of pain. I upset it. Okay, I'm getting the signal. You didn't like that. I have to ease more into that. Okay, but we don't need to scream. You got my attention. I won't do it again. So when this happened, it reminded me so much of how important it was for me to not only rewire those pain pathways, but my relationship to it. Because I'm going to get sick in life sometimes. I'm going to get injured, I'm going to experience illness, I'm going to experience pain. And if I didn't do the healing to change my brain's threat response around that, then I think it would be easy for my alarm bells to go into hyperdrive and take something that could resolve itself and make it chronic. And that's what we know even about illness and injuries, that the state we're in when it happened and how we navigate it has a really direct influence on how we heal or how we don't.

So wild. So good. I know you have a lot of steps that you work with clients through, and you've got programs and you've got all kinds of resources for people, but if you were just to give, like, one thing right now, like just one tip that anyone listening, somebody listening that's dealing with pain, navigating pain, or this is resonating, you want them to do, and I'm going to say do, even though I know it's more than doing things, but I feel like that's the connection that people want to hear. Like, what's an action item? What would you say if you were to pick one of your hundreds of tools?

Yes, I'm going to give you an action step. But the first one is a paradigm shift. Pain is much more about protection than punishment and much more about danger than damage. So what I want you to look at is not just what's happening in the body and what you're experiencing, but I want you to look at your life and your state of being and past experiences and your levels of stress today and how you're navigating that and how you're responding to the pain. Start paying attention to your internal dialogue around the pain and when you feel it. And if you're heightening the fear, the overwhelm, if you're future predicting what this means for your life, because you probably are. We all do. It's natural, it's instinctive. And we go to those heightened alarm bells because we Think our body's punishing us and there's severe damage. And not to say like, I've had surgeries, you've had surgeries. I acknowledge we've got to treat the body. And a lot of pain is protective signals from the brain trying to get your attention with whether how you're responding to your life today or unresolved stuff that we're holding and we're carrying. So the very first action step, pay attention to your internal dialogue. Have this paradigm shift that your pain isn't just damaged, but a lot of your internal alarm bells in your brain going off. And then understand like we've already shared, how you respond to it is the most important foundation to lowering the threat response in your brain. That allows every step to come to actually have full ability to be integrated into the brain. Because if we keep responding with alarm, the brain will keep sending stress signals no matter what else we do.

Powerful. Where do you want, where can people go to learn more? Where do you want to send them to your podcast or to your website? Like, where's the best place for people to find more?

My website's the best. My name, ashleydlello.com, which is definitely not easy. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. I'll put it in the show notes from there. I have a free brain body blueprint and it is free, but I will tell you it's. It's very thorough and that is a great start that really expands upon what I'm talking here. How do you start to react differently? That is a step by step how that tells you how to partner with your nervous system, calm down the body, get control of the brain. That's a more thorough how download that, use it. We don't do things with free products. We all know it. I promise you it will make a difference. And then I have one program that is bio emotional healing because that is how we rewire the nervous system. You can watch a training there. I actually have a brand new one coming up where I really dive into like the differences between regulating and rewiring. And I think that will just help you have a paradigm shift that will really open you up to. You can change your stress responses, pain, anxiety, depression, whatever it is. We don't just have to manage them so good. I'd watch that. And then if you're someone who's like, I, I want to rewire my nervous system. I want to get out of pain, I want to get out of physical, mental, emotional pain. You can schedule a consult this is an in depth 12 week process so I always do a consult to make.

Sure it's and do you do it directly or is it coaches? Is it you yourself?

It's I've been training coaches. This is a I've been training for nine months. One person who was a was bedridden and now is healthy and high amazing all the things so but it's very hands on for me still this very personal to me and so much knowledge required to do this work but I'm expanding because I can only do so in person but I've she's ready, she's helping, she's supporting. That's amazing process now and is her own lived experience so she knows the journey herself and now is the neuroscience expert alongside me. So I'm excited.

Thank you so much Ashley. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for tuning in to Midlife Conversations today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and tag me Natalie Jill Fitz and our guests on social media. The best way to support the show is by leaving a review. Send a screenshot of your review to Support Natalie Jill fitness.com for a free digital DSR journal download. And just a friendly reminder, I'm here with a microphone, not a medical degree. Half of the time I'm sharing things that I read on the Internet or learned just as you were learning it while I'm interviewing the guest. I'm not an MD or your therapist or your mom, though I do give excellent mom style pep talks. This podcast is is purely for entertainment, curiosity and educational purposes. When in doubt, please ask your own doctor. For advertising inquiries, Contact Sales Admin Category 3 CA and this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek advice from your physician. Some episodes of midlife conversation may be sponsored by products or services and I may receive compensation for advertisement of your purchases through affiliate links.