Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And it gives me great honor to bring Dr. David Hanscom on about his book Back in Control. And by the way, that is a K backwards there. On this book, he was referred to me by Bruce Lipton, who we just did an interview on the Honeymoon Effect, and Bruce's gave basically David high, high regards, he and I have spoken before as well. This book and his application are amazing, you're gonna learn all about it during this podcast. Good day to you, David. How you doing in Berkeley?

Dr. David Hanscom
doing great, I was enjoyed talking to you.

Greg Voisen
I enjoy talking with you as well, because you're so knowledgeable about this, and you did such a one ad that I think that for my listeners, they need to hear the story, your own personal story with back pain as well. And this isn't just about back pain, it's really about also the physiological, the emotional, the spiritual journey that's necessary to you know, actually get yourself out of back pain, but I'm gonna let them know a bit about you, David, because there is some at your website. And then for all of my listeners who want to just go to the website, they can. But he is a complex deformity spine surgeon for 30 years, practicing member of spine specialists of Swedish Neuroscience Institute, he is revolutionary approach to treating chronic pain has helped hundreds of patients to live pain free. In addition to being a bestselling author, he's a sought after guests on TV and radio programs and sought after speaker at medical conferences around the world. And as I mentioned, we're gonna have a link to Amazon, you can pick up a copy of this book. And he also has several other books as well. And he has an app that we're going to be talking about that you can download as well off of Android or the Apple Store. So David, look, I was reading your book. And look, you've had your own challenges with back pain. And as a back surgeon and having done hundreds of surgeries, if not 1000s, you saw the issues. And you decided to write this book because you took a new direction in your life. Can you tell the listeners really why you were in so inspired to write this book, and then subsequently develop an application and a course for people. Because that's a big part of this as well. To do something as what most people think is a lot more mechanical, they look at a physical pain in their back as being Oh, I have a disk thing or I've got a you know, I've got something, something is wrong. And I can do it through maybe chiropractic manipulation, or I could do it through a surgery. But your approach is really completely 180 from that. So as you get there,

Dr. David Hanscom
first of all, I want to emphasize really strongly, this is not my approach. So its approach to simply looks at the basic data that's been there for over 30 years. In medicine. Modern medicine right now is simply overlooking the data. There's all sorts of data showing that chronic pain is a neuro neurological disorder, it is not structural. After six months of pain in any part of the body, from headaches to burning mouth syndrome, to back pain to foot pain, whatever it is, the brain memorizes the circuits in about six to 12 months. Once those circuits are memorized, it doesn't matter what you do. It's like phantom limb pain. So that it turns out that mental pain and physical pain are the same thing. The brain does not know the difference between physical and mental pain. There's going to email from a world expert on what's called mitochondria, these little cell little organs inside each cell. Each cell has one or 2000 was called mitochondria. The little engines that drive a chemical reaction it creates energy. And when the mitochondria break down, the body becomes inflamed. The mitochondria at the smallest cellular level cannot differentiate, differentiate between mental pain or emotional pain and physical pain cannot tell the difference. So it's basically safety versus threat. So at the DNA level, same thing chronic stress creates inflammatory reactions called warrior monocytes. The little white cells that kill off viruses or bacteria, but they also kill off your own tissues. So what I've learned the hard way I went through 15 Saudi years of chronic pain I had 17 different symptoms with back pain being sort of the minor one compared to the rest of them. And I had migraine headaches. I had Bernina my feet ringing in my ears, skin, rashes popping up all over my bodies, severe allergies. My feet were burning, my stomach was a mess. My back pain was a mess. And nobody could tell me what was going on. Medical worlds come up with a term called medically unexplained symptoms, me us. And it cannot be completely more wrong. Because we look at the body and firefight chemistry, everything's wrong. So the body responds to threats or stress with a chemical reaction to optimize survival. Every living creature has the exact same reaction. Humans have a word for it called anxiety is just a chemical reaction to protect you. And when your body is sustained fight or flight chemistry, everything breaks down, all these symptoms start occurring. So we know the essence of all chronic disease mental and physical is sustained chronic threat or stress physiology. So as a surgeon, this is why I quit my practice has been documented for over 30 years, actually 40 years now that disc degeneration, bone spurs, arthritis, ruptured disc herniated disc, scoliosis, none of those have been documented to cause pain, none of them. Conversely, lack of sleep has been documented to cause chronic low back pain, lack of sleep is not the other way around. So we know it's a neurochemical disorder, the discussion document should not be a source of pain. Medicine has gone through down medicine has gone down to a structural rabbit hole, there must be a structural explanation for everything is completely the opposite. Everything is wrong, which should be called medically unexplained symptoms, when your body's on fire, your brain itself becomes inflamed, symptoms pop up all over your body. They're not psychological, it's your body's chemistry, creating symptoms, each organ system is going to respond in his own way. So hence, I have 17 different symptoms, there's up to three symptoms that are created by stress physiology. Every chronic disease has actually been documented to be crying stress physiology. So this has changed so dramatically. For me even the last six months about the mental pain versus the physical pain. Go back to my surgical proc practice, I was operating on anxiety.

Greg Voisen
So you, you mentioned these in the book, I'm looking at your introduction, page 17, you say, separate from anxiety by breaking the cycle of negative thoughts, identify stress induced anger triggers, give up victim status become more productive, proactive about your care, understand your medications, create a vision for recovery and living a productive life. Now, one of the things that comes up for me is you're talking about the why I get that. And most people are looking at the symptom from that, what causes it, versus the actual situation and they don't get what you just explained three minutes ago. They don't understand all those things. So what can you help them to do in this holistic approach to dealing with chronic pain? And can you explain why the approach that you have is essential to how it differs from traditional methods? Because they're there right now sitting there? Well, doctor did a great job of telling me where this is all happening, and all the cells in my body. But now how do I do something about it?

Dr. David Hanscom
Okay, so again, I'm gonna say this is not my data. This is just what the neuroscience says to do. My, what I've done is created a framework that allows the data to be accessed by clinicians and patients. So I'm trying to go really simple here, okay, your dresses or circumstance are processed by your brain that creates physiology is how the body functions. You're either safe or you're in threat. So a sustained threat that causes symptoms. So in other words, stress causes physiology causes symptoms, the root causes interaction between your stresses in your nervous system, right? If your stresses are high, and our nervous system is tired, you gonna fight or flight which creates symptoms, illness and disease. The answer is using what we call cues of safety, that the human every living creature has to be safe, including, especially humans. And so by creating safety, physiology, the study abroad, body breaking down, you're actually refilling and regenerating. So not only people heal, they thrive in a level, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. So the way we deal with we call it dynamic I mean, so there's ways are prophesying stresses, so they have less impact on the nervous system. There's ways of increasing the resilience of that or increasing the resiliency of the nervous system. So it's less reactive than there's ways of directly affecting physiology, to lower from fight or flight to safety. The key issue is that you have to use a combination of things. One thing alone never works. Or one thing alone might help for a few minutes, or hours or a day or two. But people say, oh, I tried mindfulness, that didn't work. Well, it helps. I tried cognitive, cognitive behavioral therapy, and it helped, but again, doesn't solve the problem. So we call it dynamic healing. This was addressing the input, the nervous system, and the output of the physiology. You use, you use these tools automatically multiple times a day, and you just start living life a lot more easily. So before I go into the specific parts of each section, there's a major concept here, that's really, really critical. Most of us want to fix our pain, right? What's running the show? The pain? Yeah. Yeah. So the healing occurs in two separate sections. One is learning how to deal with your stress physiology. And Bruce Lipton taught this to me. So this massive survivor reaction that humans call anxiety and anger, the same reaction that my cat has, but she doesn't have a name for it. So we're trying to get rid of the word anxiety, and they're just saying activated stress physiology or accurate threat physiology. And anger is hyper activated stress physiology, it's a million times stronger than your conscious brain, a million to one. You can't control it, as Bruce pointed out, it is automatic, it's hardwired with absolutely no control was also a gift. If it didn't have anxiety, and anger, we nervous would have been gone. And if this would be alive, none of us would stay alive. So as a survivor reaction, that you realize everybody has it, and makes you feel bad. It's supposed to make you feel bad. It's a survival sensation. So you develop a working relationship with it. You separate your identity from it, you watch it do its thing. And so the question I asked you rhetorically, I mean, so I just simply the word that describes your when you're in threat state is not responsive to rational interventions. How do you lower anxiety? You answer the question, right? It's just a rhetorical question.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. No, I sure I wouldn't answer it. Right. As I add some stress reaction,

Dr. David Hanscom
We have no control over it. Right, universal to everybody. And we keep calling it a psychological and it's just a state of body's physiology. Right. And by trying to psychologically it's a disaster.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, no, I, I understand what you're saying. And for the listeners, and probably for me, as well. How do you address, you know, what your addressing is? And you've made it very clear, what is causing it? And with Bruce Lipton's explanation as well, the fact that a doctor will say, many of my listeners, oh, you have arthritis? Well, arthritis is being caused from the inflammation, the inflammation is being caused by, you know, whatever, there's all kinds of diagnosis that the regular will my listeners would get from a doctor, right says, you have this, and they're saying, oh, now I'm claiming arthritis. And I'm like, Well, no, don't claim it. I say that same thing. So if you have a diet, exercise, yoga, meditation, mindfulness practice, you're doing all of those things yet used and whatever else you could do, let's say there's even more we could add to this 17 Point situation, you're still not better. Then what do you do? What do you do those peace people that are hesitant? And they're looking at, they're skeptical about it?

Dr. David Hanscom
Well, first of all, everybody wants to fix their pain. Yep. Okay, so I'm gonna go back to the survival physiology. So we have one part of his role and physiology, where you lower anxiety and lower threat physiology. So you simply lower your stress chemistry. But the other half of healing where the healing actually occurs is neuroplasticity, programming new circuits in your brain that don't have pain. So that's how we learn how to thrive. So if you're using activities or hedonistic lifestyle to bypass the painter hurts, it actually is inflammatory. So it's a process of learning how to process stress physiology, learning how to feel the pain and process it. Then the other half is nurturing joy, which is a different skill set. There are two different skill sets. So you can't use joy as a bypass for your stress physiology. So there are link but they're two separate skill sets. So if we kind of fix your pain from a neuroplasticity standpoint, Just to be clear, neuroplasticity is that your brain changes every millisecond. Your brain is Switzerland, it will take any sensory input and process it in a way for you to survive. changes every second. So we're programmed by our entire life, this is very second, there's no such thing as a true self. It's right here in front of you. The beauty that is you can program in anything you want going forward, anything. So what happens is that the skill set of learning how to lower stress physiology, you can do by changing the input. And so there's two parts to that. One is what are you holding on to? And what are you learning into it? So one of the biggest problems that you didn't do with chronic pain, physical and mental pain is the bigger problem. We'll get to that in a second. But secondly, if you're loading in negativity, your brain is coming in fight or flight. So one of the most cardinal rules that we deal with, with chronic again, today's word mental pain, that's actually the bigger issue is no complaining. No gossiping, no giving unasked for advice, no criticism, no discussing your pain, no complain about your medical care, no discussion, medical care, it all comes off the table. People in chronic pain, one of the hardest things I found out through our workshops is that people, they're in pain they want to get out of it. So they talk about it all the time, probably 70% of their waking hours are spent discussing their pain, some people 90% rise in conversation, somebody yesterday who just cannot stop talking about his pain. And I was just saying, Wait, you're in pain, you're frustrated, you're trapped, which fires up nervous system even more. And so one of the cardinal rules to start the process is changing the input of not discussing pain, complaining, etc. Stop watching TV, maybe watch the news a little bit, maybe watch programs that that are entertaining. But a study out of Australia shows that inflammatory markers are correlated directly with the time you spent watching TV doesn't matter what you watch. Watching TV more than two hours a day inflames the nervous system, especially the news. So again, on the input side, what do you learn into it? The other part of it is, what are you holding on to. So forgiveness is a big deal. So it shows that 90% of people in chronic pain are still angry at the person or situation that caused the injury in the first place. 90% the way human brain works if you stay angry, you Mazal have the person's video right there next to you. Why do you want somebody that you despise taking away your quality of life, that's a least logical thing we can do. But anger is also addicting. It's powerful, it has dopamine. And in chronic pain, you're trapped, it feels like the only thing and plus you have a right to be angry. I mean, you're trapped. But forgiveness is too big of a word is just some things are unforgivable, sometimes just ongoing abuse. There's a whole part about anger processing, that probably is more than we can talk about today. But the bottom line, anger is a physiological state, the way you solve anger, you simply drop down the physiology. That's it, we have a process called flipping a switch. So when you're anxious or frustrated, especially angry, you're your blood supply your thinking brain or neocortex goes offline, or downregulated. You can't think clearly. So we have a low saying about no action in a reaction because you're not thinking correctly. So if you're triggered, you're triggered, you can't control it. The first thing, the first thing you have to do is just get out of the room. Don't say anything, just let things calm down. So we have a 532 process called no action, no reaction, you're not thinking correctly. The second three words is called flipping the switch. Anger is so powerful. It's so addicting. Nobody will ever want to give it up. And you can't so easily change directions. I mean, I've been in a victim role long enough. I don't want this person in my life anymore. today. I just flipped the switch. He ended up doing this multiple times a day, every day, somebody cuts you off in traffic, somebody insults you, whatever it is, allow yourself to be angry, decide how long you want to stay angry, you simply change directions. Then the final two words is move on. So we simply get back into life move forward. So now your brain isn't what you want to do. And that's where the neuroplasticity starts taking place. There's no action or reaction, flip the switch and move on. Also things like reframing or should thinking, right? We get upset about things we have no control over. You know worldly events, you know, human abuse, all sorts of things are legitimate reasons to be angry. We get angry about something you have no control over. You're just wasting your time. She can let that go. But all Those are learned skills. So that's the input part of it. There's also a process called expressive writing, which is equally as important as not discussing your pain, where you're changing the input. So you're simply separating from your thoughts. You simply write down your thoughts, the more negative and emotional the better, but does not have to be that way. You tear them up nicely and one person heal without that exercise. Again, not a solution was a mandatory starting point. So I still, here's my expressive writing today, should we write it down, turn up, that's it. 30 seconds, a minute hour, whatever it is, is just an exercise. Mindfulness, we found out instead of having racing thoughts, anger, etc, simply putting your brain on a different sensation calms down the nervous system. So I have a process called active meditation, I just sit back and feel just for saying this, couldn't sit back in your chair for a second. Drop your shoulders and take a breath, and just feel the chair. Five seconds, she brings out a different sensation, you can do that all day long, easy to do doesn't take extra time. And is a form of myoclonus. But nothing is called cognitive content reprocessing, we start looking at become aware of your thought patterns, you get to watch them. And you realize a lot of them are dysfunctional, you simply choose to think differently, not suppressing. But you realize, well, this is sort of ridiculous, okay, this person didn't call me back. I don't really know the reason why this person didn't call me back. So these are cognitive, just cognitive distortions that actually disrupt your life. There's nothing you have to do so be aware of them, because they're not real in the first place. So again, input is where do you hold it on to when you load it into your brain? You have all this in the world? Because what it does, it lowers your threat physiology? What's the input, the new every nervous system. So if you raise in an abusive background, you're like a feral cat. And if you don't catch on high alert all the time, I was raised in an abusive background, I was a feral cat. It takes time to calm that cat down. When it takes time repetition, you're always looking for the threat. Right? So training to learn how to feel safe. Call therapy doesn't do that.

Greg Voisen
What about changing environment?

Well, no.

Greg Voisen
Well, I mean, you said you were raised in that, I guess. Somebody says, well, if I raised in it or a minute, how about I move out of it?

Dr. David Hanscom
Because I'm really serious about that. So people think by changing environments are going to solve their pain, it never works, and never work. The week is what happens you're at the mercy of your circumstances. In other words, when your peace of mind is at the mercy of your circumstances, your I'm sorry, when your peace of mind is dependent on your circumstances, you're at the mercy of the circumstances. So when I was in major spine surgery, inherent horrendous chronic pain issues, of course, I wanted to get out and spine surgery, probably the worst of the worst stressful professionals that exist. So I couldn't have done sports medicine, I could have gone back being an internist, I could have done er offers they could have done that's much my siblings by jury, by instinctively knew that wasn't the problem. And I was absolutely correct. Because what happens if you start avoiding stress, you will becomes very small, it becomes very stressful morning stress. So it's about processing stress.

Greg Voisen
Remember this when I when the me mentioned something, when you say change the environment, let's say, somebody works at a desk, or they work someplace where they're doing repetitive activity, which they don't really like, it doesn't matter. But then they say, Hey, I'm gonna go out and ride my bike, or I'm gonna go play volleyball, I'm gonna take a walk on the beach, or I'm gonna go into the forest and take a walk in the forest or whatever it might be. To me, that's a change in environment, wouldn't that particular action help to relieve the stress and anxiety associated with the action they're doing prior to that?

Dr. David Hanscom
So the answer is yes, but let me split this up a little bit. So the other ways you increase the resiliency of a nervous system is exercise is a big one. Diet and anti inflammatory diet helps increase the resiliency of the nervous system. Sleep is a big one. walking in the woods barefoot being out in nature, all the same common nervous system, right. So but avoiding so yeah, but actually remember the stressors that are most stressful, the ones that you can't avoid? Can't control. Otherwise you would otherwise you would. So the answer is yes. But you won't. But while you're at your desk, if you're sitting there every day seeing how much you hate your job. That's a problem. Because people if they change, jobs are going to be happier. That might be true, maybe not. But the key is get happy first, then make decisions on your terms not to seek happiness. So yeah, you're exactly right. So by diet, exercise and sleep, you're increased the resiliency of the nervous system. Trauma therapists can help the feral cat feel safe ie they can help calm me down, say a calming tools increase the resilience of nervous system all fair game. But again, our circumstances we maybe have a family situation, it's not great, or your work isn't great or your boss isn't great. And of course, it's nice to change jobs and stuff if you can, but most of the time things are stresses out the most of the stresses we can't control. So yeah, so I just think it's really critical make the differentiation to the input, the nervous system and remember, the only goal is to get your threat physiology into safe use or threat. So if I don't think as you do like breathwork, slow breathing between six to 10 breaths per minute, stimulates the vagus nerve, which is anti inflammatory. So connection with other people. deep relationships are stimulate oxytocin, which is highly anti inflammatory. Humming stimulates the seventh cranial nerve in the back of your neck, which is which stimulates the vagus nerve. You can rub your forehead. Wisdom is the fifth cranial nerve, which again stimulates the vagus nerve. So those are things you can do to actually Driftless get with the vagus nerve to actually calm things down. Biofeedback, Gnosis, acupuncture EMDR. As a surgeon, I just blew this off his wall, whatever. But what happens is that actually drifting students have a vagus nerve, they're highly anti inflammatory and actually solve the problem.

Greg Voisen
Sounds like it sounds David, like the vagus nerve is, is a major component. I think you've mentioned it five or six times. Now I do have a personal story around the vagus nerve. And that was my father went in for heart surgery and the doctor nicked his vagus nerve in the process of his heart surgery. And and they didn't actually say they didn't tell him, that's what happened. And he ended up hiccupping to death. They tried to give him everything at the time to do that. And I know this vagus nerve is you mentioned it kind of nonchalant, slightly in this conversation. But that vagus nerve goes all the way down into the heart, right. And the reality is, is that he could not control his hiccupping as a result of nicking the vagus nerve. And he died. He died as a result of being so tired from hiccupping it just really hiccup to death. And, yeah, it was sad to see because my dad was just sitting there doing this. You know, and the point was, is you're talking about stimulating this and I think the reason I bring it up the story up is because you mentioned it pretty nonchalantly, but there's a lot of people that don't know anything about it. Could you say a little bit more about this vagus nerve and what it's actually doing to actually exacerbate some of these issues we might have.

Dr. David Hanscom
Well, do you know Steven Porges, have you met Steven Porges. He's personal called the polyvagal therapy theory. And he and his wife, Sue Carter and I and a group of us have become very good friends. We run an international study group twice a month on Wednesdays and we've been talking about the deep science around chronic disease for a while. And his insight and insights in the vagus nerve have been stunning. We have not really heard of it much to him as Steven Porges. And what happens is that you have two parts of your body as far as it's more complicated than this, but in the basic terms you have a sympathetic nervous system which is activating put you in fight or flight. Then the vagus nerve is anti inflammatory goes to every internal organ in the body is innervated by the vagus nerve is located in the brainstem is the 10th cranial nerve and we still have the biggest service highly anti inflammatory and calm sinus down. When you necrotic nerve you've lost that calming effect, you have unopposed sympathetic calm. Then the vagus nerve goes to the intestines goes abou the bladder, it goes to every the spleen, the inflammatory system, the bone marrow, every organ in the body is stimulated by the vagus nerve. It's a large in the body. So what happens when you do activities, we call them cues of safety, you actually stimulate an anti-inflammatory effect. And just to be clear, when talking about threat physiology, you have a bunch of components you have stress chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline, you have then you have the conception of fuel by cortisol takes fuel out of the body. It's called a catabolic state which takes fuel out of your body is supposed to anabolic state, and then your neurotransmitters In the brain, your cells are separated by a space called synapse, a communicate with neurotransmitters that are either calming or excitatory. And so what happens in stress, you go from acetylcholine, which is calming to glutamate, which is excitatory. So your chemicals in your brain change, half your brain is the immune system. So in chronic fight or flight, you're actually your entire brains inflamed bones connected to the vagus nerve. And so the vagus nerve is reflecting the inflammatory state of the brain into the rest of the body. Wow. So it is highly more complicated that then you have this then just have to stress chemicals like adrenaline, cortisol, histamines, all these things are stimuli in your body in general, heart rate goes up, etc. And so there's a bunch of things for the threat response. And again, your unconscious brain is processing against Bruce Lipton's data, about 40 million bits of information per second 40 million, your conscious brain is processing about 40 40 million to 40. So what you're doing is what we're doing with the process of dealing with the input, the nervous system and the output, you're simply allowing your body to heal. So that's where we go back to this original conversation, which is so critical today about fixing your pain,

Greg Voisen
You’re also allowing it, I think that I get from the conversation, it's really about a peaceful calming state, which in most cases, were not like you said, you were always on Tiger growing up. And I think this is a great segue for us because you have built an application called the OSI journey course its application and of course, right. And it's teaching these principles. And in the time remaining, you've done a great job explaining where this is all coming from. And again, I'm going to tell my listeners, go out and get the book, I have my highlighter stuck in there, because I've been highlighting pieces of it. That course that I started taking, I think has valuable content for people to make a shift. And they it's like anything in life, you kind of need to be reminded, and you need to have a path to get there, right? You're talking about all these things, this app and this course, give you that path. And they do a good job of explaining it, tell us you know, how people get it, why they should get it. Now, if they're in pain, what's the biggest benefit from getting it.

Dr. David Hanscom
So again, I want to emphasize that the mental pain is a much bigger problem than physical pain, we have no protected response from mental pain. And we can talk about this maybe under the podcast and what repetitive, unpleasant thoughts. But what happened when I wrote the book in 2016, it reflects my story, my understanding of anxiety and anger. So it's a really good starting point, if you look just do some homework. And so it's been a really solid foundation. But it doesn't give you an action plan that works. So I developed what's called the DLC journey. It's a computer based course and also an app and teaches to a sequence of just little things to calm the nervous system, creates more awareness, then starts providing tools actually regulate your physiology. And then leg five, middle part of the course is around anger. Every person that heals has to learn how to process anger, every person, no exceptions to that. And because what happens with error, there's a blame game going on. And then no one factor that predicts healing is two things. One of them is willingness to engage. And secondly is taking full responsibility for every aspect of the care and their life, which is the opposite of anger. Then the course goes on to getting organized in repetition. Remember, you're reprogramming your brain away from the pain, you're learning a new language. So you're not going to learn French by not speaking English, you have to practice French. To have the life you have to practice your life. So you're doing repetitions of what you want. And this is the hardest part of the process. People cannot give up the fixing mode. If I have one thing and I give up the way, fixing that's why you can learn how to physiology, it will always be there. You're not going to fix that. The harder you try to fix it, the worse it gets. So my point is quit fighting darkness is normal is protective. Just turn on the light. And so there's so much against the paradigm in medicine where we're fixing, fixing, fixing. We were fixed you can't fix darkness. Right?

Greg Voisen
No, you have to bring light. It's the duality of life. Right? You can't have one without the other. I think the other thing that you mentioned in the book was the victim mentality and I you mentioned Add earlier on that people will talk 70% of their time about their pain, right? Well, if you're just focused on the pain, you're going to have more pain. And you usually, most people, and I'm not saying everybody listening to the show, but if they listened to themselves, you know, and if you had a camera, I tell people, you don't have to believe everything you think. And if you had a camera following you all day long, would you like what you see? Right? And I think many of us might not like what we see the way we react what we do. We don't have a camera follow us. That's one thing. And secondly, we don't need to sit around and believe everything we think we need to have an open mind to doing that. And you have you have some success stories from the book. Obviously, you've been able to cure a lot of people. But what are some of the success stories that you've had? I think people relate to that the individuals that utilized your app, read your book took your course, and the success they've had

Dr. David Hanscom
one gentleman Tom, he's always happened to me how he shared his name. He's a highest level real estate developer and develop pain in his 30s. And over the next 25 years had 28 surgeries with nine of those back surgeries. And he if I had a suicide attempt using high dose medications, and the physiatrist, down there in Palm Springs kept asking mobile asking him why are you so angry, he goes, I'm angry. But all sudden, something woke up in him. So he realized he was angry. He happened to pick up my book. Within six weeks, all of his pain disappeared. It stayed that way for the last seven years. Wow. Sizes he each well, he's never felt better in his entire life, even before he had 28 surgeries. I did not think that was possible. Rita in Seattle, he's now 86. So she had chronic pain for 55 years. She's in pain free for eight years. But the doctors didn't ask her is that her ex-husband committed suicide at age 30 that her son committed suicide at age 44. In 2008. Nobody asked those questions. That's stress. I have another gentleman in my office with chronic neck pain. Super nice guy. I said to my fellow said, look, this is not very hard. It does take much time. By the way. I did not spend a lot of time talking to my patients about their troubles, but actually enforces the troubles. What are the solutions? So I said you know what's going on? I mean, sometimes chronic stress can firepit nervous system, you can have pain that we can't really see on a test. He holds up his hand in the shape of a gun and pulls his middle finger as a trigger. And I go, he goes my son. And with there's a lot of suicides and chronic pain, by the way. It's a horrendous problem. And I said I'm really sorry, did he commit suicide? He said no, he was murdered. And turns out his grandson had murdered his father who has his son who's paranoid schizophrenic. That's stress. Now had another nurse walk into a patient's room with total body pain. Turns out that her husband had fathered her granddaughter. That stress I mean, people I mean, people really suffer. I mean, I'm just

Greg Voisen
talking about you know, there's this doctor that I work with Brian almond down here in San Diego Kaiser done the study with 141,000 people on adverse childhood experiences. Now they say ace studies. I'm sure you've heard about it. But all of those anger, resentment, everything that we carry with us. They have proven that leads to obesity, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, right. And so, Kaiser now is really promoting using the ACE study, to check for these to see where you score on that ACE study. And so I I work closely with Brian so I understand what's going on.

Dr. David Hanscom
So listen to this. This is something I heard this last week in our scientific roundtable. This is a study that really just changed the game for me. So he did study out of Arizona that shows that we you have high ACE scores now there's a lot of trauma and emotional pain. Yeah. That your body we have a choice of physical pain versus emotional pain, your body actually chooses physical pain. Humans do not tolerate emotional pain. She bought a body Lee that choose physical pain, or they'll actually create physical pain can see this on functional MRI sketch. And so the body does not tolerate emotional pain and suffering. So when for instance, when people do cutting, it's not just to distract themselves they actually feel relief to that what happened, you know or externalize a pain, you can sort of see your suffering. You have a slight summons a control over it. You've externalize it, even title, your limited title because you're in pain that people do not tolerate emotional pain blew my mind. Because I heard, so I give my physical pain. So if you feel anxious, that's the destin essence in the nutshell, right there. My biggest problem is to get people to heal, because once people start the process, they heal, but they can't. And so part of the process is, and one reason it's a little bit of a challenge, a big challenge. First of all, you're in pain, that's a legitimate reason to be upset. But secondly, you have to learn how to tolerate anxiety, in order to give up your pain. That's why it's such a balancing act is why it's a sequence, you cannot do it over mind over matter. That's why it's never just one tool that she saw the problem. It's a super balancing act. And we haven't even got into these repetitive unpleasant thoughts, which is probably the driving force behind all chronic disease. Now, some presumptions this comes from working with Bruce is that arc, we don't like Survivor reactions. We use our ego and thought processes to counteract this negativity. And the most of them are cognitive distortions. We don't know who we are, we're Cashore egos or identities. So our inability to escape human consciousness is the essence of evil. It goes really grandiose, which I love to talk about at some point. But

Greg Voisen
while you're running out of time, but I think for our listeners, you know, to pull away from this podcast, and to really take something away. They definitely need to go to your website. And it's just David Hanscom h-a-n-s-c-o-m.com. That's one of the places they can reach you, right? I don't have a

Dr. David Hanscom
callback and control.com. I don't come anymore.

Greg Voisen
Okay. So let's go backincontrol.com. And we'll put a link on the website for that. We'll also put a link to where you can download the applications, this, you can actually get this application for your iPhone, or your Android device, we'll put a link there as well. If you were to in the few minutes remaining, leave the listeners with and I'd like to invite you to come back on because we didn't really get to the whole essence of this. And I think a second podcast is definitely warranted with two bits of kind of sound advice associated with dealing with chronic pain. So we've got people out there that are listening, I guarantee are in chronic pain, yet, you've spoken a lot about the causes. They don't really understand how to pull that all together. What two things would you want to tell them or give them a bit of advice? I mean, I know they can contact you through the website, that's definitely going to be made available to them. Is there anything you could do for them? As you're listening right now?

Dr. David Hanscom
Well, I just want to really admonish people that chronic pain, mental or physical and or physical is soluble. And right now the medical profession does not look at look at it this way. It's very much of a Socratic process, you take charge of your life, and you have a choice of thriving at a level that you never knew is possible. That's why I do this. So I quit my practice. So as opposed to bounce around the country or resource after resource after resource was my resource or somebody else's, please go through this sequence of learning how to calm your physiology and nurture joy to very solvable problem.

Greg Voisen
Now that's to sample bits of advice. And again, to go through the process, in other words, like a journey, that's my calls it, you know, the D OC journey course, this doesn't happen overnight. It's not a spontaneous healing kind of process. You have to work with all of your nervous system, with physiology, with the psychology that's causing this. And when you mash this together in this inner woven kind of tapestry, you'll begin to see how they're all interrelated. So I would really encourage my listeners to, you know, go to your website, we'll put a link up for the website. You'll see it in the blog entry. We'll also have it everywhere, and also for this application. David, I know that we're running short on time with us, I want to be honor that. I really want to thank you for being on the show, and sharing and talking about your own personal story with pain, as well as some success stories that you just related that I think were wonderful, as well as the approaches to this and where people can go to help get solutions You're also out speaking, you're doing workshops, you're on Zoom, you've got lots of places where my, my listeners can get to you. And I do want to invite you back for round two, to take a deeper dive into this, if you're open to doing that,

Dr. David Hanscom
I'd love to do and again, thank you very much for the opportunity. I've really enjoyed this.

Greg Voisen
Well, I appreciate you. And I appreciate your approach to this. Because normally, as they've said, in the world, as you know, because you lived in it, the pain would come up and someone would say you got a back pain, okay? What's the solutions? Well, we can maybe try and manipulate it or we can do surgery. I mean, those were the options. Those aren't your only options. That's what I want to tell my listeners is, those aren't your only options. Look for this third option, which has been presented to you because it makes so much more sense. And then obviously, if you need to have back surgery because there's a real issue. Yeah, go do what you've got to do listeners. But on the other hand, please give this a tries first, because this is this is David's way for you to get out of this pain without having to do that. Thanks so much.

Dr. David Hanscom
Thank you.

Greg Voisen
Namaste to you. Thank you.

Dr. David Hanscom
Thank you