From: hounddog23x@gmail.com   
      
   Health   
      
   How your brain can heal your body: Astonishing new research reveals the   
   brain's ability to rewire itself can conquer pain - and overcome 'untreatable'   
   illnesses    
      
   By Daily Mail Reporter   
   23:57 12 Jan 2015, updated 11:06 13 Jan 2015   
   	+5   
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   Pain specialist Dr Michael Moskowitz fell and his thigh bone cracked   
   Immediately after his pain was a true ten out of ten    
   But then he lay motionless waiting for the ambulance and felt no pain at all   
   'My brain simply shut off the pain,' said the neuroplasticity expert   
   This is the ability of the brain to change its structure    
   By DR NORMAN DOIDGE FOR THE DAILY MAIL    
      
   Pain specialist Dr Michael Moskowitz was 49 when he and a friend decided to   
   take a look at some army tanks and other armoured vehicles that were about to   
   take part in a parade. Dr Moskowitz couldn't resist climbing up onto a tank   
   turret.   
      
   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.   
      
   Scroll down for video    
      
   'My brain simply shut off the pain,' said Dr Michael Moskowitz, who fell and   
   his thigh bone cracked	+5   
   'My brain simply shut off the pain,' said Dr Michael Moskowitz, who fell and   
   his thigh bone cracked   
   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.   
      
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   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.   
      
   He was observing a medical phenomenon he'd taught his students about for   
   years	+5   
   He was observing a medical phenomenon he'd taught his students about for years   
   But that view was overturned in the Sixties - we now understand that the pain   
   perception system is spread through the brain and spinal cord, too, and the   
   brain controls how much we feel. When pain messages are sent from damaged   
   tissue, these messages    
   ascend to the brain only if the brain gives them 'permission'.   
      
   If this is granted, a gate will open and increase our feeling of pain by   
   allowing certain brain cells to turn on and transmit their signal. But the   
   brain can also close a gate and block the pain signal by releasing endorphins,   
   the natural narcotics made    
   by our bodies to quell pain.   
      
   Knowing that switches exist is one thing, knowing how to turn them off when   
   you are in agony is another.   
      
   And that's where the brain's 'neuroplasticity' comes in. Neuroplasticity is   
   the ability of the brain to change its structure and how it works in response   
   to mental activity and experience.   
      
    Each time he got an attack, he began visualising his brain in chronic pain.   
   Then he would imagine the problem areas shrinking   
   For 400 years, the mainstream scientific view was the brain could not change,   
   but was fixed for life when we reached adulthood.   
      
   At the start of this century, however, scientists began to prove that our   
   adult brain circuits constantly reconfigure and change. Hundreds of studies   
   have now shown how mental activity is not only the product of the brain but   
   also shapes it.   
      
   Dr Moskowitz is one of many scientists and patients around the world who are   
   using this to offer hope for 'untreatable' health problems.   
      
   They show how exploiting the extraordinary healing powers of the brain can not   
   only combat pain but aid recovery from strokes, improve ailing vision and   
   combat symptoms of conditions such as Parkinson's.   
      
   Dr Moskowitz, who originally trained as psychiatrist, specialises in treating   
   patients with intractable pain in California. But he became a world leader in   
   the use of neuroplasticity for treating pain after making discoveries while   
   treating himself.   
      
   Three years before his fall, Dr Moskowitz suffered another accident when   
   water-skiing with his daughters. He flipped off an inflated tyre behind a   
   boat, hitting the water with his head bent backwards. The resulting pain   
   dominated his life. Morphine and    
   other heavy-duty painkillers and treatments including massage, self-hypnosis,   
   ice, rest and anti-inflammatory drugs, barely touched it.   
      
   That pain tormented him for 13 years. Dr Moskowitz was 57 when he hit rock   
   bottom - and then began researching the discovery that the brain is   
   neuroplastic and seeing how this might relate to him.   
      
   The role of acute pain is to alert us to injury or disease by sending a signal   
   to the brain. But sometimes an injury affects the body and the nerve cells   
   (neurons) in the brain. As acute pain continues, these neurons become   
   hypersensitive, firing more    
   easily with less stimulation.   
      
      
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