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, Support   Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices