31 days project: Prelude

Introducing my 31 days project: The big naked pain and Brain Campaign: Over the next 31 days I will be placing a short clip from either a movie, documentary or cartoon that has references towards pain and the brain. Some clips may show direct examples others may show different forms of pain experience. The idea is to relate and educate.

I originally opted for 100 days but due to the sheer volume of movie watching I was becoming bug-eyed! Depending on the success of the first 31 days may encourage me to continue. So why am I doing this? Well it’s to highlight that there are references towards pain and neuroscience around us all the time and by digging a little deeper I want to try to help you understand what things mean or how they relate to our everyday lives. It goes deeper still because sometimes what we see, hear and understand can influence our everyday habits, behaviors and beliefs. Some of these clips are for fun in the hope that they make you laugh or smile, others might be a little more thought-provoking, some you might relate too and may cause you some distress. I apologize if that is the case. I don’t expect everybody to have the same opinion, experience or behavior towards these clips, that’s what make us uniquely human we are all individual, which is one of many reasons why a one size fits all approach doesn’t work in the management of Pain.

I will attempt to reference the clips throughout the project. I highlight that there is a mountain of research around and there may be some papers that are more appropriate than others. I would appreciate anybody who does follow the project to share any papers that would be appropriate to the clips thus allowing us all to have a read.

Anyway without further ado lets start with: Michael Mosley Explains pain

This clip was taken from a 2011 BBC programme on Pleasure and Pain. I have added this because it gives a nice explanation of the mechanisms of pain. Michael explanation explains pain and uses a good example of how we might experience pain. Michael highlights that Pain is reliant on context and that it is an output of the brain. If you want to know more a great book is Explain Pain (reference) by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley, 2013

Enjoy the clip, please share your thoughts.

Tune in on March the 1st for the first clip

TNP