Camilla Nord's experience with chronic pain illustrates how the brain's neuroplasticity can influence physical sensations of pain, challenging the traditional divide between mind and body in medical understanding. Her book, "The Balanced Brain," argues that all illnesses encompass both mental and physical dimensions, positing that ignoring this connection could lead to untreated suffering. Recent research supports this holistic view, advocating for a more integrated approach to health outcomes. Nord has noted a mixed response to her ideas, highlighting a cultural resistance to reevaluating longstanding health paradigms.
Illnesses are physical, or they are mental. But, Nord writes, there is no separate category of illness, one that is confined to the mind and does not involve biological changes.
Not only that, she says, but the reverse also applies: there is no purely physical ailment in which your brain does not play a role.
It's a huge, untapped source of possible improvement for people who are ill, and by ignoring it we are making people more sick than they need to be.
Removing the original source of the pain for a few months had altered this process of neuroplasticity enough to make a lasting difference to the amount of pain she experienced.
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