Summary of Norman Doidge’s The Brain’s Way of Healing (EPUB)

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Dr. Michael Moskowitz is a psychiatrist-turned-pain-specialist who has often been forced to use himself as a guinea pig. He and another psychiatrist-turned-pain-specialist, Bobby Hines, have set up a pain clinic in Sausalito, California, which treats West Coast patients with intractable pain.

#2 The brain can turn off pain because the function of acute pain is not to torment us but to alert us to danger. As long as Moskowitz didn’t move, he was in no danger, so his brain turned off his pain.

#3 The traditional scientific view of pain is that when we are hurt, our pain nerves send a one-way signal up to the brain, and the intensity of the pain is proportional to the seriousness of our injury.

#4 The brain controls how much pain we feel, according to the gate control theory of pain. The brain can close a gate and block the pain signal by releasing endorphins, the narcotics made by our bodies to quell pain.