Three Pain Switches: Feeling, Suffering, Calming

Daniel outlines the three pain circuits and explains the calming pathway (prefrontal cortex and periaqueductal gray) that produces natural opiates and is disabled by drugs or head trauma.

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Pain isn’t just in your body, it’s in your brain. In this groundbreaking episode, Host Dave Asprey sits down with Dr. Daniel Amen to reveal how emotional and physical pain share the same neural circuits and how you can rewire them for relief, resilience, and longevity. You’ll learn practical tools to break the “doom loop” of pain, restore neuroplasticity, and retrain your brain for calm, healing, and high performance. This is essentiallistening for anyone ready to stop managing pain and start hacking it.

Watch this episode on YouTube for the full video experience:

https://www.youtube.com/@DaveAspreyBPR

The Washington Post called Dr. Daniel Amen the most popular psychiatrist in America. He is a former infantry medic and board certified child and adult psychiatrist who trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. He is the CEO and founder of Amen Clinics, with 11 locations nationwide and home to the world’s largest brain imaging database for psychiatry with nearly 300,000 SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries. Dr. Amen is a 12 time New York Times bestselling author, including the books Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Healing ADD, Memory Rescue, Raising Mentally Strong Kids, and The End of Mental Illness. He has published over 90 scientific articles and led groundbreaking brain imaging research on NFL players, childhood trauma, negativity bias, reversing brain aging, obesity and the brain, and predicting treatment responses. With over 10 million followers and multiple PBS specials, his mission is bold: to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. His newest book Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain explores the neuroscience of pain and how to heal it through brain optimization and functional medicine.

Host Dave Asprey and Dr. Amen uncover how suppressed emotions, inflammation, gut health, and mitochondrial function all influence pain and what you can do to reverse it using biohacking, functional medicine, and supplements. They explore how chronic pain rewires neural pathways, how to activate your brain’s natural calming switch, and why techniques like hypnosis, red light therapy, rage journaling, and havening can restore balance to your nervous system. You’ll also learn the surprising links between aspartame, Tylenol, and generational anxiety, and how to protect your mitochondria to optimize energy, metabolism, and emotional resilience.

This episode delivers practical, science based tools for brain optimization, sleep optimization, neuroplasticity, and anti aging while connecting the dots between biohacking, psychology, and functional medicine to help you live smarter not harder.

You’ll Learn:

• How emotional pain and physical pain run on the same brain circuits

• Why suppressed rage can trigger chronic pain and how to release it

• The link between inflammation, gut health, and brain suffering pathways

• How supplements like saffron, curcumin, and omega 3s support pain relief and mood

• Why red light therapy, hypnosis, and havening boost neuroplasticity and calm the nervous system

• How environmental toxins, aspartame, and Tylenol disrupt mitochondria and increase pain

• Simple daily habits to retrain your brain for resilience, optimism, and longevity

Dave Asprey is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, founder of Bulletproof Coffee, and the father of biohacking. With over 1,000 interviews and 1 million monthly listeners, The Human Upgrade brings you the knowledge to take control of your biology, extend your longevity, and optimize every system in your body and mind. Each episode delivers cutting-edge insights in health, performance, neuroscience, supplements, nutrition, biohacking, emotional intelligence, and conscious living.

New episodes are released every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday (BONUS). Dave asks the questions no one else will and gives you real tools to become stronger, smarter, and more resilient.

Keywords: chronic pain neuroscience, emotional pain circuits, Change Your Brain Change Your Pain, Dr. Daniel Amen, Dave Asprey, biohacking, neuroinflammation, anterior cingulate cortex, SPECT imaging, mitochondrial metabolism, functional psychiatry, neuroplasticity, rage therapy, havening technique, red light therapy, saffron supplements, aspartame toxicity, gut brain axis, trauma healing, pain hacking

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