# The life of a sensor is short ##### Untangling Pain ---  --- ## tl;dr - Chronic pain can make it feel as though your body is permanently wired for danger. - But the body can adapt in both directions, including becoming less sensitive again. - Fire alarms can be reduced or moved, and the brain can learn to tell danger from a false alarm. - Having pain for years does not mean it will always be this way. > [!abstract]- Transcript > > If you are someone that is in persistent pain, who has chronic pain, you may worry that your body has made all these changes, that it's got more fire alarms, that it's got this distorted signal, that the brain is perceiving all these dangers. And that's the way it's always going to be. And in actual fact, that's what we used to believe. That when you're in pain, that's it, you're not getting out of it. > > But that is not the case. We know this now. > > Just as your body creates those changes to help you and make you become more sensitive, it can do the opposite. > > Your body changes all the time. And it adapts to what it needs in that moment. Which means that it can go back to just having one fire alarm in an area. > > It can move the fire alarms, further away from the toaster. The spinal cord can stop being so on edge. And the brain can finally know the difference between the house being on fire and burnt toast. > > This quote from the book, Explain Pain, by David Butler and Lorimer Mosley, which I cannot stress enough how brilliant this book is. > > If you're a therapist, you need this book. But even if you're not, if you're someone in pain, it can help you understand pain so much more. > > This is where a lot of the information that I've got today is adapted from this. > > In the book the quote says "the life of a sensor is short, they only live for a few days, and then they are replaced by fresh sensors. This means that your sensitivity is continually changing. Remember this point. If you are a pain sufferer, it may give you fresh hope. Your current level of sensitivity is not fixed." > > So things change, all the time. Just because you have pain now, and maybe you've had pain for years and years and years, does not mean it will be like this forever. Things change and there is hope. Sources → [[Sources – Untangling Pain#Module 1|Module 1]] Next lesson → [[Module 1 Lesson 06 – How do you know it’s your nervous system|How do you know it’s your nervous system]] %% - [[Your Body Can Change — Even in Persistent Pain]] - [[The life of a sensor is short]] - [[Just because you have pain now, and maybe you’ve had pain for years does not mean it will be like this forever]] %%