New School of Nutritional Medicine
Sep 20, 2026 · 57 min · 10 segments
Can the brain create real, physical pain even after the body has healed? In this episode, host David Mark, Co-Director Coaching at the New School of Nutritional Medicine, speaks with Dr Howard…
Howard SchubinerGuest
Gigi CockellGuest
David MarkHost
I think one of the hardest concepts for people to understand is that pain can be completely real without there necessarily being ongoing tissue damage.
The way that I always explain this is there are two different forms of warning signals.
There's the warning signal that happens when we burn our hand on a stove and our brain is detecting the change in sensory information and it's alerting us to that.
But there's this other alternative form of warning signal that we never really knew existed before.
And this warning signal, for me, the way that I like to explain it is it comes in the form of emotional overwhelm.
And I always liken it to, you know, our brain is a little bit like a computer and just like any computer, there's a finite amount of processing power.
And so if we have a thousand different tabs open on our computer what happens is it buffers.
It's because it's forcibly stopping the user from adding more for it to process, right? So by design, it's slowing the user down.
When it reaches that critical level of overwhelm, we can have an equivalent buffering system.
And effectively, whatever symptom we get is going to be the most effective at slowing us down, right? And the reason the brain wants to slow us down is the less, you know, the fewer times we go outside of our house, the less we socialize, the less the brain ultimately has to take on.
The problem is, is the symptoms when we go and we get them investigated and there isn't a very clear answer for what's going on, we then start to have more overwhelm.
And so that is what can lead to a cycle of of chronic pain where the brain doesn't have the opportunity to stop its own warning signal and how you can explain it in your
That's brilliant because it really captures in a real way what people experience.
and how they can understand it from a point of view of, oh, that's like a computer or an overload system.
I think one of the hardest concepts for people to understand is that pain can be completely real without there necessarily being ongoing tissue damage.
The way that I always explain this is there are two different forms of warning signals.
There's the warning signal that happens when we burn our hand on a stove and our brain is detecting the change in sensory information and it's alerting us to that.
But there's this other alternative form of warning signal that we never really knew existed before.
And this warning signal, for me, the way that I like to explain it is it comes in the form of emotional overwhelm.
And I always liken it to, you know, our brain is a little bit like a computer and just like any computer, there's a finite amount of processing power.
And so if we have a thousand different tabs open on our computer what happens is it buffers.
It's because it's forcibly stopping the user from adding more for it to process, right? So by design, it's slowing the user down.
When it reaches that critical level of overwhelm, we can have an equivalent buffering system.
And effectively, whatever symptom we get is going to be the most effective at slowing us down, right? And the reason the brain wants to slow us down is the less, you know, the fewer times we go outside of our house, the less we socialize, the less the brain ultimately has to take on.
The problem is, is the symptoms when we go and we get them investigated and there isn't a very clear answer for what's going on, we then start to have more overwhelm.
And so that is what can lead to a cycle of of chronic pain where the brain doesn't have the opportunity to stop its own warning signal and how you can explain it in your
That's brilliant because it really captures in a real way what people experience.
and how they can understand it from a point of view of, oh, that's like a computer or an overload system.
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