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,
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