- Another way of thinking about this
is just that we all have a threat detection system
and it's like an internal alarm.
If a car is coming toward you, you freeze.
If you have to stand up and speak to 500 people,
you blush, you get red, you get embarrassed.
If you feel like you're coming into a tense situation
or a conversation, maybe your stomach turns into knots.
And everyone knows, everyone can relate to the idea
that these things cause physical reactions and those
are real, and those are common, and everyone has them
and we all have them 'cause we're all human.
And that, you know, if you have a busy or stressful time,
maybe you have a headache, and it happens to everybody.
And sometimes, just like a smoke alarm goes off
and there's not actually smoke or there's not actually
a fire, it's just a little puff of smoke.
It's not that big a deal, but our brain is the same way.
So sometimes it rings the buzzer, it rings an alarm,
when maybe the thing stimulating it is just little,
or it's a memory, or it's whatever.
And we wanna make sure that we understand
the difference between, just like when your smoke alarm
goes off, we wanna understand: Is there a fire?
Do we have to call the fire department?
Or do we just need to take the pan
off the stove and everything's okay?
That's an acute situation, but in a chronic situation,
once a symptom begins, if it's activated
by the threat detection system,
that symptom can be easily learned.
It can be learned by the brain, and it can be remembered
by the brain, and then it can be reproduced
in the same situations like the helicopter.
And then we can tend to focus on it and worry about it
and maybe the situation that caused it in the first place
isn't really even there anymore.
But it can just begin to become more and more common.
The brain's expecting to produce.
Every time I bend over, it's causing pain.
And then pretty soon my brain is just doing it.
I even think about bending over
and I'm getting some discomfort.
And so, the reason that people have these conditions
is simply that they're human.
It's a human condition. These are human ways.
Everyone has mind-body conditions
at some point in their lifetime.
And maybe they don't recognise them, but we do.
And so we're really just kind of trying to this
out of the realm of diseases and pathology
and people are messed up or crazy or broken,
when in reality, they're human.
This is a nice little example on YouTube
called the backwards bicycle.
It's about how neurocircuitry works.
- Hey, it's me, Dustin.
Welcome back to "Smarter Every Day."
You've heard people say, "It's just like riding a bike,"
meaning it's really easy
and you can't forget how to do it, right?
But I did something. I did something that damaged my mind.
It happened on the streets of Amsterdam
and I got really scared honestly.
I can't ride a bike like you can anymore.
Before I show you the video of what happened,
I need to tell you the backstory.
Like many six-year-olds with a MacGyver mullet,
I learned how to ride a bike when I was really young.
I had learned a life skill and I was really proud of it.
Everything changed though when my friend Barney
called me 25 years later.
Where I work, the welders are geniuses
and they like to play jokes on the engineers.
He had a challenge for me.
He had built a special bicycle
and he wanted me to try to ride it.
He had only changed one thing.
When you turn the handlebar to the left,
the wheel goes to the right.
When you turn it to the right, the wheel goes to the left.
I thought this would be easy, so I hopped on the bike
ready to demonstrate how quickly I could conquer this.
- And here he is, ladies and gentlemen.
Mr. Dustin Sandlin, first attempt riding the bicycle.
- All right, so the faster I go, the better.
(laughter)
I couldn't do it.
You can see that I'm laughing,
but I'm actually really frustrated.
In this moment, I had a really deep revelation.
My thinking was in a rut.
This bike revealed a very deep truth to me.
I had the knowledge of how to operate the bike,
but I did not have the understanding.
Therefore, knowledge is not understanding.
Look, I know what you're probably thinking.
Dustin's probably just an uncoordinated engineer
and can't do it, but that's not the case at all.
The algorithm that's associated with riding a bike
in your brain is just that complicated.
Think about it.
Downwards force on the pedals, leaning your whole body,
pulling and pushing the handlebars,
gyroscopic procession in the wheels.
Every single force is part of this algorithm.
And if you change any one part,
it affects the entire control system.
I do not make definitive statements that often,
but I'm telling you right now, you cannot ride this bicycle.
You might think you can, but you can't.
I know this because I'm often asked to speak at universities
and conferences and I take the bike with me.
It's always the same.
People think they're gonna try some trick
or they're just gonna power through it.
It doesn't work. Your brain cannot handle this.
For instance, this guy, I offered him $200 just
to ride this bike 10 feet across the stage.
Everybody thought he could do it.
(audience laughs)
- No, no, no, no. You didn't understand.
You didn't understand. So, this way.
(audience laughs)
All right, so whenever you're ready.
No, no, you have to keep your feet on it.
(audience laughs)
You gotta start rolling at least.
(audience laughs)
And go.
Oh no! (audience laughs)
Keep your feet on the pedal. Go.
(audience laughs) Fell right off.
(audience laughs)
Just keep your feet on the pedals. Yep.
(audience laughs)
All right, one more time. One more time.
Once you have a rigid way of thinking in your head,
sometimes you cannot change that, even if you want to.
(audience laughs)
(audience claps)
So here's what I did. It was a personal challenge.
I stayed out here in this driveway
and I practised about five minutes every day.
My neighbours made fun of me, I had many wrecks,
but after eight months, this happened.
One day I couldn't ride the bike, and the next day I could.
It was like I could feel some kind of pathway
in my brain that was now unlocked.
It was really weird though.
It's like there's this trail in my brain,
but if I wasn't paying close enough attention to it,
my brain would easily lose that neural path
and jump back onto the old road it was more familiar with.
Any small distractions at all, like a cell phone ringing
in my pocket, would instantly throw my brain
back to the old control algorithm and I would wreck,
but at least I could ride it.
My son is the closest person to me genetically,
and he's been riding a normal bike for three years.
That's over half his life.
I wanted to know how long it would take him to learn
how to ride a backwards bike, so I told him
if he learned how to ride a backwards bike,
he could go with me to Australia and meet a real astronaut.
Are you gonna give up?
- No. - Go ahead.
This is how it starts. Look at this.
This is such a big deal.
Get up. You got it.
Did you see his brain get it?
So, he, in...
How many weeks have we been doing this? Two weeks?
In two weeks, he did something that took me
eight months to do, which demonstrates
that a child has more neuroplasticity.
Am I even saying that right? Than an adult.
It's clear from this experiment
that children have a much more plastic brain than adults.
That's why the best time to learn a language
is when you're a young child.
All right, today's bike log:
I can ride smooth, I can ride fast.
I'm thinking the experiment is over.
Okay, now I'm in Amsterdam,
a city that has more bicycles than people.
The question is: Can I ride a normal bike now?
I mean, I've spent all this time
unlearning how to ride a bike.
If I go back and try to ride a normal one,
will my brain mess up?
So I've tweeted a "Smarter Every Day" meetup, if you will,
and I'm gonna see if somebody brings a bicycle
and I'm gonna try to ride a normal bike,
It's backwards. It's backwards.
This was one of the most frustrating moments of my life.
I had ridden a normal bike since I was six,
but in this moment, I couldn't do it anymore.
I had set out to prove that I could free my brain
from a cognitive bias, but at this point,
I'm pretty sure that all I proved is that
I can only re-designate that bias.
So what you're not seeing is just a group of people here
looking at me, looking at the strange American
that can't ride a bike 'cause they think I'm dumb.
But I'm actually two levels deep into this,
'cause I've learned and unlearned.
All right.
After 20 minutes of making a fool out of myself,
suddenly my brain clicked back into the old algorithm.
I can't explain it, but it happened
in a very specific moment.
(laughter)
I got it. I got it. I got it.
I'm back.
Oh, hold it. Wait. I got it, I got it.
Okay, there it is. There was the moment.
Okay, I can ride a bike.
I tried to explain this to the people around me
and they just didn't get it.
They thought I was faking the previous 20 minutes
and I couldn't get anybody to believe me.
That looked like I faked that, didn't it?
- [Person] Yeah.
- You think I'm faking. You don't believe.
- [Person] That looks so weird. You were like, "la, la, la."
- You think I'm lying, don't you?
- [Person] Yeah, I do. - I'm not lying.
I felt like the only person on the planet
who had ever unlearned how to ride a bike
and I couldn't articulate it to anyone
because everybody just knew
that you can't forget how to ride a bike.
(cheerful music)
So I learned three things from this experiment.
I learned that welders are often smarter than engineers.
I learned that knowledge does not equal understanding.
And I learned that truth is truth,
no matter what I think about it.
So be very careful how you interpret things
because you're looking at the world with a bias.
Whether you think you are or not.
I'm Dustin. You get smarter every day.
Have a good one. (cheerful music continues)
- Cute, huh?
He called it neural. It's neural learning.
Neural pathways. Riding a bike.
It took him eight months, did he say eight months?
To change that neural circuit.
There was a patient I was working with,
it took him two years to unwind the neural circuitry
in his brain that was causing him to have severe reactions
to every food except for chicken and rice.
He could only eat chicken and rice for three years.
Every other food, every other food, including milk,
coffee, anything, you name it, was causing him
severe migraines, severe itchings, severe brain zaps.
It was amazing how.
And he kept working at it and he kept working at
changing those neural circuits and now he's fine.
And it was amazing.
He also, he had smells. He couldn't stand any smells.
And what happened is he started at one point
and it just spiralled because of more and more fear,
more and more symptoms, more and more worry.
So the other thing I wanted to show you, and I don't think
we'll run these right now, but there's, on my website,
there's six animated videos that I made.
Maybe I'll show one of them. Just a couple minutes.
Here's one of them. There's six.
So the first three are on introduction,
like the introductory stuff we talked about today.
And you can show these to people.
- [Speaker] What is pain?
If you think you know what pain is,
you might be surprised by this video.
Everyone has felt pain.
We know that touching a hot stove, twisting an ankle,
or cutting a finger hurts.
But what is actually happening when we get injured?
Pain is a protector. We need pain.
It protects us from all of the things
that are dangerous in the world.
Put your hand on a hot stove and the feeling of intense pain
will cause you to pull your hand away
before you even have time to think.
Here, pain is saving you from further injury.
How is that pain generated?
What parts of our bodies are involved?
Think about this example.
Imagine you are running from a lion.
You step in a hole and twist your ankle.
Do you think you will get pain?
Will this pain stop you from running?
Not if your life is in danger.
In a situation like this, even though you are injured,
your brain will choose to not feel any pain
because it is making a choice.
A choice to save your life.
Wait, you mean pain is a choice? What?
Neuroscience, the science of how the brain works,
teaches us that pain is what the brain actually creates
in response to certain signals.
When we use the word "signals,"
we are talking about electrical messages
that the body sends via the nerves to the brain.
When the brain gets incoming signals of danger
from some kind of tissue damage,
it generates the feeling of pain,
usually very, very quickly, within a millisecond.
Okay, good enough. You get that, right?
But what about the guy being chased by the lion?
What happened there?
Our brains are crafty enough to choose which signals
to pay attention to and which signals to ignore.
In other words, what is the bigger danger at the moment
will dictate what the brain chooses
to focus on and respond to.
Cool, huh? Clever brain.
It knows when to turn on pain and when to not turn on pain.
And the brain also decides when to turn off pain.
Also clever, most of the time.
Why do we say that?
Because sometimes, the brain doesn't turn off pain,
even after an injury has healed.
And this can cause a situation where pain becomes chronic.
Not good. Not so clever brain.
This is a big problem
as you will learn more about in the next video.
One final thing to know about pain.
Now that you know that it is the brain that creates pain,
you also need to understand this: All pain is real.
Repeating: All pain is real.
For someone who has been living with pain
for a long period of time, what we call chronic pain,
anyone who says that pain is all in your head
is either dismissive or judgmental or both.
People with chronic pain are not faking it or making it up.
They don't want to live with pain and it is not their fault.
People with chronic pain have a real condition
and there is real treatment.
This type of pain is called Neural circuit pain.
And our goal is to help you understand where
this type of pain comes from and how it can be cured.
- So what I wanna kind of end up with today
is this, is that pain is a protector.
It's always there to protect us from physical injury,
but it's also an alarm if there's emotional injury
and understanding that makes a whole huge difference
in our understanding of pain as always being bad.
People obviously don't wanna be in pain.
It's a horrible thing. I've been in pain.
I'm sure a lot of you have been in pain.
It's not something you would wish on anybody.
How can the pain not be the problem?
Because the pain is the solution that our brain has devised
to guide us, to help us, to send us a message
or to send us an alarm.
And if we can learn that and understand that,
it can make a huge difference in taking and shifting
our mindset from structural problem
to a neural circuit problem, our bodies are totally broken
and our lives are totally broken
and we have no hope and it's devastating
and there's nothing we can do
to having some glimmer of hope and optimism.
And I was at a conference a few years ago in London
and a man stood up and he said, "In my culture,
pain is viewed as a gift from God."
And I hadn't thought about it that way,
but I said if God created us and God made us have pain,
then yeah, because it's a gift
that can help us understand what's going on,
to help protect us, help us grow, help us be better.
In a sense, it's a gift.
It's not the first thing you would say to somebody
because they would want to strangle you.
Saying, "Oh, your pain is a gift." (laughs)
Well, you take it then. (audience laughs)
Here's a gift.
I'll happily give it to you as a gift, doctor.
But down the road sometimes, people can understand that.
Not everybody, but some people can understand.
And for some people it makes sense
and maybe for other people it doesn't.
This is a sculpture, a glass sculpture of a brain,
kind of like this one, only glass
and has a little light in the back.
And a woman made it who had a fracture of her foot.
She had pain and then the pain didn't go away
and it got worse, and she had a procedure to fix it
and another procedure and then another one
and then she ended up having an ankle fusion
and that didn't work and she had another ankle fusion.
And then she had an ankle replacement,
and then she had another ankle replacement,
and she's literally flying around the United States,
different cities, different specialists
to find their cure for this chronic foot
and ankle pain that kept getting worse and worse.
And she had had a difficult childhood and she had had trauma
and she had sexual abuse and she had other issues
that had occurred later in her life.
And at the time of the fracture, there was a lot
of stuff going on in her life, a lot of stress.
And so she had 10 surgeries and none of them worked.
And then she had an 11th surgery.
And the 11th surgery she had was to...
Hard to say even, but to amputate her leg
below the knee to try to make the pain go away.
And you know what happened? It didn't work.
She still had the pain in her ankle and foot
that she didn't have an ankle or foot anymore.
And that's when I saw her, after all that had happened.
And she's an amazing person and she calls me
my favourite doctor and I call her my favourite patient.
And she wrote this when she made the sculpture,
this brain sculpture for me.
This is several years later now.
"People are a lot like glass.
When whole, they are strong and versatile,
When they shatter, there are pieces everywhere
which seem impossible to put back together.
When the pieces are given specific colours and labels,
they can be reassembled,
although they will never be the same, they can be better.
Stress in life is like the heat applied to glass.
Howard, you have been my kiln.
You showed me how to take up my broken pieces
and assemble them in a way
that made me a better version of myself.
You helped me see the beauty within myself.
Thank you for my beautiful brain."
You know, what an amazing difference that is.
Amazing change in understanding and mindset.
And one of the favourite things that I love to say
and I've alluded to it several times today,
is life is for learning.
And that comes from a song by Joni Mitchell,
the song "Woodstock."
And life is for learning.
And so when we think about this work,
it's a privilege and an honour to be in connection
and communication with people just like you guys did
with each other just this afternoon in connection
and communication to talk about things that are important,
that are real, that are life changing and life giving.
And it's just so poignant and it's so beautiful
and it just enriches yourself to be in communication
with people like this who put trust and faith in you.
And it's a shift, it's a total shift.
It's a change in paradigm.
And tipping points don't come easily.
Tipping points take a long time for new ideas to take hold
and to become mainstream and to become commonly accepted.
I think it was Victor Hugo said,
"There's nothing more powerful
than a good idea whose time has come."
And I'm thinking that the time has come
for this new idea to be more accepted.
And that's why I'm here and that's why you're here.
And so I'm gonna try to give you as much information
and skills and stories and learning as we can
over the next four days as we move through the processes
that we use, and the first step is understanding the brain,
and that's understanding how the brain works,
understanding what pain is,
and that's what we tried to accomplish today.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Thank you so much for being here.
(audience clapping)