How to Control Your Sense of Pain & Pleasure

This episode I discuss our sense of pain and pleasure: where and how they each arise in our mind and body and various ways to control their intensity. I discuss the science of behavioral tools like acupuncture and hypnosis and directed pressure, including the neural circuits they each activate to modulate our experience of pain or pleasure. I also discuss whole body pain, pain "syndromes" and novel pain relief compounds such as Acetyl-L-Carnitine, SAMe and Agmatine. I discuss neuroplasticity of the pain system and the key role that visual perception plays in pain modulation. Finally, I address the link between dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, with arousal, pleasure and pain. As always, both basic science and various protocols are described. Note: The description of the dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) was intentionally simplified and does not include mention of dorsal horn spinal relay neurons, etc. For an excellent full text review of this anatomy and circuits for touch sensing, please see: https://bit.ly/3jH9CPf Read the full show notes for this episode at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://athleticgreens.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Skin, Pain, Pleasure 00:01:50 Protocol 1: Maximizing Motivation (with Dopamine & Pleasure) 00:07:29 Sponsors: AG1, LMNT & Waking Up 00:12:04 Pleasure & Pain, & Skin Sensors 00:18:13 Sensing Touch with Your Brain: Magnification of Feet, Hands, Lips, Face, Genitals 00:22:16 Two-Point Discrimination, Dermatomes 00:28:11 Thoughts & Genes That Make Physical Pain Worse 00:33:45 Expectations, Anxiety, & Pain Threshold 00:40:27 Protocol 2: Cold Sensing Is Relative; Getting Into Cold Water 00:45:22 Protocol 3: Heat Is Absolute 00:48:10 Injury & Pain 00:52:04 Protocol 4: Plasticity of Pain: Key Role of Vision 00:58:08 Sensing Disparate Body Parts As Merged 01:01:00 Pain “Syndromes”, Psychogenic Fever, “Psychosomatics” 01:04:40 Fibromyalgia, Naltrexone, Protocol 5: Acetyl-L-Carnitine 01:12:24 Protocol 6: Agmatine, S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAMe), L-5-Methyltetrahydrofolate 01:17:27 Acupuncture: Mechanism, Non-Responders, Itch & Inflammation 01:28:20 Laser Photobiomodulation, Protocol 7: Hypnosis (reveri.com) 01:30:00 Protocol 8: Pressure-Based Pain Relief, “Gate Theory of Pain (Relief)” 01:37:53 Redheads & Pain Thresholds, Endogenous Opioids 01:44:02 Protocol 8: Love & Pain, Dopamine 01:49:23 Pleasure & Reproduction, Dopamine & Serotonin, Oxytocin 01:51:40 Protocol 9: PEA, L-Phenylalanine (Precursor to Tyrosine) 01:55:40 Contextual Control of Pleasure by Autonomic Arousal, Dopamine Baselines 01:59:40 Pleasure-Pain Balance 02:01:24 Protocol 10: Controlling Pleasure, Dopamine & Motivation Over Time 02:06:40 Protocol 11: Immediate, Non-Goal-Directed Pleasure, PAG 02:08:40 Direction of Touch: Pleasure Versus Pain, Arousal & Touch “Sensitivity” 02:13:00 Synthesis & How to Conceptualize Pain and Pleasure, Support Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices