As Pain Awareness Month draws to a close this September, Dr. Eric Anderson, a neurologist and Chief Medical Officer of Lin Health, the virtual health care company based in Denver, CO, is urging a broader understanding of what drives persistent pain. Anderson argues that the nervous system often plays a far greater role in chronic pain than many patients and clinicians appreciate, and that targeting how the brain processes and responds to pain signals could unlock more effective treatment.
"Pain is always produced by the brain and the nervous system," Anderson said. "Now when someone hears 'it's in your brain,' they often hear 'it's imaginary.' But it's quite the opposite. Your pain is very very real. It's generated by real circuits in a real nervous system." In chronic pain, he explains, that interpretation can contribute to the nervous system becoming oversensitive, a process known as central sensitization. When this happens, even a light touch can trigger a pain response.
Understanding central sensitization opens new treatment avenues beyond simply addressing the part of the body that hurts. "And the nervous system is plastic, meaning that what it may have learned, it can unlearn," Anderson said. "And I think that that is the most encouraging news in pain medicine right now."
That principle is central to Lin Health's brain-based approach. The company's model is rooted in modern clinical understanding and evidence-based behavioral therapies designed to help patients move beyond coping with pain by addressing how the nervous system processes and responds to pain signals. The program is delivered virtually, matching each patient with a trained pain-recovery coach after a medical review. Patients then receive a personalized pain-recovery plan that incorporates evidence-based therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), among other approaches.
These therapies aim to help patients understand how pain is processed, reduce fear and reactivity around symptoms, and develop new ways of responding to pain. Patients work with their coach through weekly live sessions and in-app messaging while having access to daily exercises and other resources through the Lin Health app, which can be downloaded at the Google Play Store for Android devices or the Apple App Store for iPhones.
The results are notable. Lin Health reports that 92% of patients experience significant improvement in pain and level of function, pain intensity is reduced by 45%, and 59% of patients with medium-to-high pain reduce their pain to low or no pain after six months, with the company currently earning a 4.8 rating on TrustPilot.com.
For people living with persistent pain, the distinction between where pain is felt and how it is processed could open the door to substantially more effective treatment. During Pain Awareness Month, Anderson and Lin Health are bringing greater attention to the nervous system's role in chronic pain, and to an approach that looks beyond symptoms to the underlying mechanisms that sustain them. More information is available through the company's linhealth.onlinepresskit247.com.
