​I spent this week recording my show for Audible, “No Brainer.”  (It comes out in the fall).  There are twelve topics and last week we worked on pain.
 
I found myself at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for an MRI brain scan.  Most people hate lying down in the tight-fitting, coffin-shaped thing that slowly glides into the scanner, but I love it. This is my happy place. Even the ear shattering honking noises don’t bother me; anything is an improvement on my mother’s shouting when I was in the womb. I bathed in the peace as my brain was photographed, slice by slice. They were looking for the areas which activate with pain. They put some gel on my leg (a liquid form of chili pepper) and told me to grade the pain from one to ten, ten being unbearable. At first, I felt nothing, smirking to myself how butch I was.  The smirk was wiped off my face when a minute later, I was at ten. I kept schtum because for some insane reason I didn’t want them to think I was a loser which is insane. There I was sweating, biting my lip and pretending I was perfectly fine. I’d be an excellent role model in Guantanamo Bay. You can’t hide your feelings when your brain’s being filmed because everyone can see your pain. Finally, I admitted I was about to faint so they removed the gel.  They then had me imagine the pain to see if just thinking about it activated the same area.  I’ll find out the results in two weeks, fingers crossed they don’t make me do it again. 
 
We then talked about the phenomenon of pain. The neurologist told me that it’s not the actual wound that hurts, it’s how the brain perceives it. She also told me that emotional and physical pain are found in the same brain region as each other. You can turn up and down the sensation of both depending on your beliefs. In general, they found that religious people feel less pain than the faithless.  This is the only time I have ever wished that I believed in Jesus.
 
Later in the day, I met with Vidyamaia Bursh who created a mindfulness technique for pain called Breathworks.  At sixteen she cracked her spine and had to have her discs welded together. Then at twenty-three she had a car accident and was bedridden for the next thirty years, paralyzed from the waist down which ended in a total breakdown.  One night the pain was so excruciating, she decided to kill herself in the morning. Then she had an epiphany and realised that she didn’t have to make it to the morning, she just had to deal with the pain for this moment, and then the next moment, and so on.
 
She came to see me in a wheelchair, still paralysed but now living in the moment, and says she focuses on the electrical shooting pain in her legs, so severe that her toes cramp. She said when she used to feel the agony, she’d try to suppress the feeling, holding her breath which made her mind and body rigid. Now, she’s learnt that if she breathes into the exact location and submits to the pain, she feels her body ‘soften’ and is able to live with it. It was astounding, there she was paralyzed from waist down but her eyes shone and her face glowed. Pain is pain but suffering is optional and she’s the living proof.
 
My Audible show will be available some time in 2018 - I will let you know when to keep an ear out. 

How To Be Human: The Manual is available online and from all good bookshops. I'm on tour this spring with my #Frazzled Show. Tickets are still available - book quick.

If you want to join my community and be the first to know more about my research into the brain and mental health, as well as exclusive news, special offers and other things that might be useful to you, just tell me where to get in touch.

I’m doing a show for Audible called “No Brainer” which has made me the happiest woman alive. First of all, it’s a podcast so I don’t have to look good or even get dressed if I choose not to. Usually, I’m dressed. I’ve just returned from touring the U.S. interviewing state-of-the-art scientists on longevity, stress, death (my fav so far) compassion, attention, nature/nurture, teen-agers etc. Scientists are my rock stars, I bow before their brains. I was completely in awe of Dr. Ann McKee, who first discovered why so many American footballers were dying prematurely or while still alive suddenly turning violent, becoming addicts or experiencing complete mental breakdowns. She showed me the brain of a ninety-year old with dementia alongside the brain of a thirty-year old NFL player.  The young brain was far more damaged; dotted with brown plaques throughout and dark decaying edges. 
 
Another doctor in New York, Helen S. Mayberg, was the first to use deep brain stimulation on depressed patients.  She stands next to a surgeon who drills through the skull (the patient is kept awake but doesn’t feel anything) and implants an electrical device. When they hit the correct target, she sometimes witnesses a patient’s face turn from deep, despair to bright and alert within seconds. One guy who hadn’t been able to leave his house for most of his adult life suddenly said he wanted to go out and walk his dog. It’s miraculous when it works.
 
I also met genius neurologist Dr. Allan Ropper, professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, who told me how he can tell which part of the brain is malfunctioning by observing the behavior of the patient. This guy is way cooler than “House.” But I really fell in love with him when he explained how you determine if someone is dead. There was a case where a woman was brain dead but she was still able to deliver a baby, and another where a young boy presumed dead went through puberty because his organs remained functioning.  Allan said he’s a stickler for making sure someone is well and truly dead before the transplant doctors, snatch those organs of the deceased away like vultures circling a corpse. In Victorian times, they used to put a bell in the coffin in case anyone was buried alive. Thank God for Dr. Ropper.
 
In Atlanta, I went to a breeding colony of 1800 monkeys where Dr. Mar Sanchez and her team took an aggressive, agitated baby monkey away from his equally aggressive mother and gave it to a nurturing mother. After a few weeks, the abused monkey became more pacified and this behavior was reflected in not only his genes but his off-spring’s genes. This ability to change gene expression is called epigenetics. I thought why didn’t they switch my mother with a calmer one? I’d never would have had to take the seventy tons of anti-depressants I’ve had to swallow so far.
 
I then flew to Silicon Valley and met David Eagleman (professor of neuroscience at Stanford, incredible looking and buff). He let me try on a suit called the Versatile Extra-Sensory Transducer, that he’s developed and is about to appear on the market. It has thirty-two embedded vibratory motors that send messages to the brain which are interpreted into sound so now the deaf will be able to, not so much hear in the way we do, but sense sound through their bodies. His future vision is to have data transmitted through the skin so you’ll be able to feel weather reports, stock market results and most important you’ll be able to ‘feel’ your emails rather than read them. That might kill me especially feeling spam.
 
My ultimate hero is Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA medical school. His books are the reason I got hooked on the brain.  He was the first person to describe the difference between the brain and the mind. He says, the mind is the energy and information the brain creates. I found his book, “Mindsight” so clear and exciting, I changed careers because nothing, I mean nothing in the Cosmos is as fascinating as the mind. Sorry Brian Cox but it’s true.
 
My Audible show will be available some time in 2018 - I will let you know when to keep an ear out. 

How To Be Human: The Manual is available online and from all good bookshops. I'm on tour this spring with my #Frazzled Show. Tickets are still available - book quick.

If you want to join my community and be the first to know more about my research into the brain and mental health, as well as exclusive news, special offers and other things that might be useful to you, just tell me where to get in touch.