In order to understand how opiates effect the brain - there has to be an understanding of what pain exactly is and how it works as a unconscious mechanism.
I found it very interesting that especially chronic pains, have almost exactly the same effect on the brain, as chronic stress and that this effect can be reversed by the controlled use of opiates, as part of a treatment.
But first of all, what is pain?
The feeling when pain rushes through your body is known by everybody.
Agonizing as it is in nature - its takes over your mind and emotions rapidly and blocks off self initiative.
This is due to a process, in which the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is actually "learning" from the impulses it is getting from the body.
The Brain is trying to make sense of the feeling you get and associates it with your mental and emotional makeup.
So in other words,
it compares old experiences of pain/stress with the pain/stress felt in that particular moment and how you dealt with it priorly, to come to a conclusion on how to feel about the pain.
Pain impulses are transported 14x faster than normal nerv-impulses and they also suppress other normal nerv-impulses on their way to the brain. Its the stinging pain felt in the first moment, (e.g. when touching a hot stove) that makes us react within seconds reflexively.
Some of you may have experienced that, when you hold your hand in extremely hot water, the pain will decrease with time, even though the water is not getting much colder.
This is due to a second wave of pain related impulses, that is transported 10x slower, than the priorly felt pain.
You can already see, that the speed the impulses are transported with is directly related to how bad the pain is felt my the person exposed to it.
Very interesting to notice here, is that the worse the pain is felt, the more it messes with the balance of our brain.
Because the felt pain has to be dealt with, there are many emotional and mental factors playing together, that determine how good the exposed person is able to deal with the feeling.
Basically our brain uses the limbic system (emotions) and the prefrontal cortex (intellect) to make sense of the felt pain and react "properly", by either helping to release it or
by making it worse, in order to maintain the body in a alerted state - to make the individual more watchful.
This process is completely unconscious.
While the limbic system decides on how to rate the felt pain by intuitive feeling,
the neocortex is trying to make sense of it by comparing it to previous felt pains and by making a logical analysis of the cause of the pain, trying to draw conclusions from it.
Men tend towards a dominant neocortex, while the limbic system of women is more dominant than that of men.
Therefore men, tying to solve pains and stress, tend to loose themselves in in the analytical realm.
Women on the other hand often tend towards their limbic system. They tend to deal with pain and stress by countering it with their emotional makeup, making it way more easy for them to develop strategies in countering chronic pain or stress, than most men.
Overstimulation plays a big role regarding strong pains/or emotional traumas and causes a lot of stress, often over a long period of time.
When this happens the brain gets overwhelmed by the incoming pain/stress-impulses.
This is experienced by a crippling feeling of the mind and also the body. Your focus is completely occupied by the feeling, for that particular moment.
That is due to the fact that the prefrontal cortex fails its role to maintain holistic thought, making it easier for the limbic brain to get over the feeling and ready to respond as rational as possible afterwards.
However, in the meantime the brain becomes heavily imbalanced, leading to a shutdown of big parts of the neocortex, what can actually end up damaging it, when the periods of imbalance occur often or for a long period of time.
This is the case with chronic pain or stress disorders! And it is known as pain remembrance...
As we just learned, the limbic brain and the neocortex process the incoming pain and stress impulses.
But what happens when the impulses wont stop coming in? How can the brain counteract when its under permanent fire?
The answer it is, that it really cant.
When something like this occurs, the brain has no other choice but to adapt to the patterns of impulses.
This leads to a dramatic change though out the whole nervoussytem down to parts of your DNA.
The genetics of cells in the spinal cord can change, regarding the production of neurotransmitters as substance p and L-glutamate.
This results in a disorder, that makes the neurones fire heavy impulses, even when non-painfull (or non-stressfull) stimulations occur.
Science has long proven, that chronifications of pain, like mentioned above can be prohibited by the usage of opiates, when taken in early enough.
When I found out about this,
that fact really cought my interest, because it seems to me like something, that could seriously help people that have developed such chronic disorders.
Because, more than often the cause of chronic pain and stress has passed away long ago, but the pain still remains after all. This is due to the above mentioned changes within the nervous system, that is the brain forced to do, in order to secure itself.
The body has its own painkillers called endorphins and enkephalins.
Those molecules have a similar structure as opiates and lead to the very same effects on the human nervous system.
For most strong or chronic pains, opiates are still the only solution for achieving relief or even freedom of pain.
The mechanism works like this:
Endorphins and enkephalins are secreted by the brain as an reaction to pain-impulses. These offered materials or taken in opiates bind on special receptors of the nervcell. The cell reacts to this by inhibiting the pain transmission both in the spinal cord and in the brain.
The limbic system of the brain reacts by secreting noradrenaline, serotonin and GABA. This leads to a jag, similar to a "Runners High", that experienced runners get when they get a sense of elation that hits after a couple miles.
(Its known to be quite addictive.)
You can clearly see that opiates affect several levels of the nervous system. On the one hand it regulates impulses down to a minimum, so that the prefrontal-cortex can act its proper role.
On the other hand it leads to a state of well being, in which there is a distance between the pain, stress and mind of the person.
This means that it can effectively restore holistic thought patterns (balance of the brain) by taking off the load of impulses that happen to be there chronically. Be it chronic pain or stress.
In my opinion this mechanism could be used to cure most psychoses.
Because they are always related to
contradictory trains of thought that are deeply rooted within the subconscious and are mostly learned by prior experiences.
Stage fright is a good example for such an stress related disorder. Even when the person is consciously aware that there is nothing to fear about, when speaking to a broader audience, their heart starts pumping or they break a sweat. This is due to the stress, the person has associated with prior incidents when they felt insecure, with such an situation.
Its an physical reaction of our body, towards our surroundings and if this reaction is associated with a lot of pressure, the body most often switches faster into fight and flight mode, than the mind can react to it, in a conscious manner.
When this degree of "psychosis" is reached, opiates might be the only solution for effective betterment in the short run.
Of course the real solution to a betterment of the psyche lies within oneself, because willpower and conscious thinking are the only two things that can really help you to transform yourself into the person you would like to be.
Opiates are overall highly addictive and therefore shouldn't ever be consumed a lot over a long period of time.
But as part of a treatment, especially in order to eradicate painful or stressful remembrance I find it to be a way more convincing substance than antidepressants, for example.
As far as I know there are not many scientists that are drawing a line between pain and stress-disorders and see the potential of this approach.
Thanks for your attention. I hope you found some value in this article.
hoodrich