The Solution Behind the Symptoms
Jul 21, 2026 · 44 min · 13 segments
John Gasienica helps a patient overcome chronic pain that lingered after surviving cancer, and Dr. Becca Kennedy explores how neurological processes and emotional trauma can cause chronic pain, even…
John GasienicaHost
Becca KennedyGuestLizGuest
So I love chatting with you because you have this unbelievable wealth of knowledge of just the physical body and then an understanding of how powerful the brain can be and how it can create symptoms.
The session we're gonna be listening to is a session I did with a patient who beat cancer.
But ever since she got her cancer treatment, she's had chronic pain ever since, and she's trying to grapple with this idea of where is this pain coming from.
And I would imagine when you have cancer and you've gone through chemo or radiation, you can imagine all this damage being in your body.
But we know there's a, there's millions of people out there who have beaten cancer who have chronic pain, where it's a neurological issue now.
Can you explain how a process, going through something like cancer could cause chronic pain, not in the physical sense, but in the way that it affects your nervous system and neurology?
Yeah, and really when we think about the new neuroscience, that pain and other sensations is a warning signal, a protective warning signal made in the brain to protect us.
Well, if we've been through more danger, then our brain becomes more hypervigilant, or it certainly can become more hypervigilant.
So something like cancer is big and scary and can kill us, so that's a huge stressor and a huge danger.
And so our brain keeps in place what it's learned from the past and then tries to keep us safe and keep warning us just on this unconscious automatic level.
So, so certainly going through something like cancer, even though the cancer itself is gone and the actual danger in the body is gone, our brain can certainly get stuck in place just warning us, h- being hypervigilant.
"What I gotta look out for this? What if I miss that?" You know, all of these things.
And again, you know, I think what's so important that I talk with my patients is really understanding that this is an unconscious level.
It might not even be conscious at all, but it's just the unconscious wheels turning in the neural circuit.
So I love chatting with you because you have this unbelievable wealth of knowledge of just the physical body and then an understanding of how powerful the brain can be and how it can create symptoms.
The session we're gonna be listening to is a session I did with a patient who beat cancer.
But ever since she got her cancer treatment, she's had chronic pain ever since, and she's trying to grapple with this idea of where is this pain coming from.
And I would imagine when you have cancer and you've gone through chemo or radiation, you can imagine all this damage being in your body.
But we know there's a, there's millions of people out there who have beaten cancer who have chronic pain, where it's a neurological issue now.
Can you explain how a process, going through something like cancer could cause chronic pain, not in the physical sense, but in the way that it affects your nervous system and neurology?
Yeah, and really when we think about the new neuroscience, that pain and other sensations is a warning signal, a protective warning signal made in the brain to protect us.
Well, if we've been through more danger, then our brain becomes more hypervigilant, or it certainly can become more hypervigilant.
So something like cancer is big and scary and can kill us, so that's a huge stressor and a huge danger.
And so our brain keeps in place what it's learned from the past and then tries to keep us safe and keep warning us just on this unconscious automatic level.
So, so certainly going through something like cancer, even though the cancer itself is gone and the actual danger in the body is gone, our brain can certainly get stuck in place just warning us, h- being hypervigilant.
"What I gotta look out for this? What if I miss that?" You know, all of these things.
And again, you know, I think what's so important that I talk with my patients is really understanding that this is an unconscious level.
It might not even be conscious at all, but it's just the unconscious wheels turning in the neural circuit.
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