Lucy Copp
is a producer for AirTalk, hosted by Larry Mantle, delivering conversations that offer an array of voices and topics.
Published February 9, 2024 11:03 AM
A woman clutches her stomach in pain.
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Grace Cary
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Getty Images
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Topline:
A new study reveals something about pain that's counterintuitive: back pain can occur in the absence of tissue damage due to learned neural circuits in the brain.
Why it matters: Every year, the medical community is learning more and more about pain — its origins, its function, and its relationship to the mind and body. While research has long shown that pain comes from the brain, many scientists and doctors haven't necessarily engaged with this critical information.
The backstory: In Dr. Howard Schubiner's study, doctors examined 222 patients suffering chronic neck and back pain. After running MRI tests and physical exams, the researchers found that nearly all the patients had spinal anomalies. However, only 12% of the participants showed a structural problem as the root of their pain. The other 88% of participants had, what the researchers call primary pain, meaning the pain was generated by neural circuits in the brain, not structural damage.
Pain is universal. It's also extremely personal.
Almost everyone has experienced some kind of pain in their life, be it emotional or physical. Many of us, millions in fact, also suffer from chronic pain. I know I have. And while we might think we know exactly where the pain stems from, many times, the source of the pain is not what we think.
Every year, the medical community is learning more and more about pain — its origins, its function, and its relationship to the mind and body. While research has long shown that pain comes from the brain, many scientists and doctors haven't necessarily engaged with this critical information. Remember the last time you went to the doctor for pain? You were probably prescribed medication, maybe you got an X-ray and perhaps that did the trick.
Unfortunately, for the millions of Americans suffering from chronic pain, simple interventions often don't work. Why? Because we're often misdiagnosing the source of the pain and thus, mistreating it as well.
This illustration image shows tablets of opioid painkiller Oxycodone delivered on medical prescription taken on Sept. 18, 2019 in Washington, DC.
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Eric Baradat
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AFP via Getty Images
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Thankfully, a new study published in the Journal of Pain provides new data to help us understand pain — where it comes from, why we experience it, and howwe can not only better manage it, but in some cases eradicate it completely.
So, where does pain come from?
Scientists now believe that all pain is generated in the brain, but that doesn't make the pain any less real. And it's understandable if this is triggering for some. Many people, women especially, aren't heard when they say they feel pain. There's even a term for it — "medical gaslighting." Have you ever had a doctor say to you "it's all in your head" in a dismissive way?
"It's not all in your head, but it is coming from your head," said Nathaniel Frank, an author and historian who is writing a book about the mind-body connection to pain. Frank recently wrote an op-ed in the LA Times called "The pain in your back? It's really a pain in your brain." His article cites the new research on pain, which further proves this premise.
"Pain experience is generated from a whole variety of experiences," said Frank, who also directs Cornell University's "What We Know" project, which collects scholarship on cultural and policy issues for the general public. "If you've broken a bone, slipped a disc, torn a muscle, you likely experienced structural pain. What's fascinating is that over time, even as the injury heals, our pain can get worse."
So, why does our pain get worse even when your bodies are getting better?
The mind-body connection to pain
Michigan State University Clinical Professor Dr. Howard Schubiner recently led a study that revealed something about pain that's counterintuitive — back pain can occur in the absence of tissue damage due to learned neural circuits in the brain.
"We see this all the time," said Schubiner. "Normally when you have an injury it will heal. It may take weeks. In chronic pain sufferers, it increases over time and spreads to different areas of the body."
In Schubiner's study, doctors examined 222 patients suffering chronic neck and back pain. After running MRI tests and physical exams, the researchers found that nearly all the patients had spinal anomalies. However, only 12% of the participants showed a structuralproblem as the root of their pain. The other 88% of participants had what the researchers call primary pain, meaning the pain was generated by neural circuits in the brain, not by structural damage.
Jess Breach of Harlequins walks off with crutches after the Allianz Premier 15's Semi-Final match between Harlequins Women and Wasps FC Ladies at the Twickenham Stoop on May 22, 2021 in London, England.
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Alex Davidson
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"The existing medical paradigm assumes a physical cause for most chronic pain," Frank wrote in his LA Times op-ed. But the results of Schubiner's study show that's often not the case.
"The results are really remarkable. If you have chronic neck or back pain and you get an MRI, the MRI will be abnormal. But it turns out, that most people have an abnormal MRI even if they have no pain. So mild findings on an MRI may not be the cause of the pain," said Schubiner.
To further conclude that most participants were experiencing non-structural pain, the researchers looked at patient histories and the characteristics of their pain.
"If the pain comes and goes, shifts and moves, turns on and off, is triggered by an innocuous stimuli, that's what was the determining factor," Schubiner said.
These findings confirm a suspicion I had about about my own experience with chronic pain — that while it likely began with my head injury, over time it morphed into an emotional pain.
"All injuries heal, but sometimes the brain will continue to send these pain signals," said Schubiner. "It creates a spiraling process. Especially when people think they're in danger."
Why do we experience pain?
Your pain is not trying to hurt you. It's actually trying to help you.
"The brain has a danger alarm mechanism. It turns on and it turns off. And so the brain is actually in charge of whether or not we experience pain in any given situation," says Schubiner.
Even after our pain alerts us that we've been harmed, it doesn't always turn off. The danger has passed, but our bodies don't know it.
It's not all in your head, but it is coming from your head.
— Nathaniel Frank, author and historian
"Anxiety can make the pain worse," said Schubiner. "This has actually been proven. So when we go to the doctor for an MRI and it reveals an abnormality, it's critical that we remember that the brain can cause pain. In fact, functional MRIs have shown that physical pain lights up a similar part of the brain as emotional pain."
How can we manage our pain?
New treatments are helping people reverse or eliminate chronic pain without invasive treatment or medications.
"This is an epidemic of fear as much of anything else," said Nathaniel Frank. "Of course, you need to go to an M.D. and rule out anything life-threatening. But once that's been ruled out, there are all these resources online now who can help you understand that others have gone through similar experiences."
Pain education is important, said Frank, who has dealt with his own chronic pain.
"For some people this happens quickly when they learn about pain education. But for others, particularly those who may have had real adversity of trauma when there young, it can take a long time to rewire your brain," says Frank.
All injuries heal, but sometimes the brain will continue to send these pain signals. It creates a spiraling process. Especially when people think they're in danger.
— Dr. Howard Schubiner, Michigan State University
Going to different doctors and getting different diagnoses are important steps — the more perspective you have on your pain, the more likely it is you'll be able to address it.
But pain can also be an incredibly lonely experience, which may seem odd given how universal and ubiquitous it is. But it can carry with it a degree of shame, stigma and certainly misery. Frank suggests finding community, reaching out to folks who are also struggling and researching the mind-body connection.
My personal pain story
My own story with chronic pain begins and ends with the mind-body connection. A couple years ago I sustained a concussion after I was violently mugged. When the headaches lasted past two weeks, and then past a couple months, I started to worry. Is my brain bleeding? Am I permanently damaged? Will I ever be OK? The more I worried, the worse it got. If you’ve dealt with chronic pain you know the cycle can be vicious. I decided to get a CT scan for peace of mind, and yet even with normal results, it didn't bring me any. The headaches persisted.
Three months into the head pain, and after changing my whole lifestyle appease it, I decided to do something a little more drastic and entirely experimental — I booked a 10-day trip to Hawai'i. Maybe I knew something intuitively that I would soon find out, or maybe I was just that desperate, but from the moment we took off the throbbing, pounding, pulsating stopped. Just like that, I felt like myself again.
But this is the part that astounds me and lends itself to the paradigm shift around pain — while I likely sustained a concussion that caused my headaches for the days and weeks that followed, at some point, it is also likely that my pain was no longer being caused by the physical injury but by the emotional one. My body still thought I was in danger.
In the end, my pain lasted for only months. I'm one of the lucky ones — many people suffer for years with no end in sight. This is why Frank and Dr. Schubiner believe a paradigm shift around pain is necessary. And why everyone, as Frank wrote in his op-ed, deserves access to that paradigm shift.
Resources for managing pain
The key to stopping the pain, Frank said, is teaching your nervous system that it is safe and can turn off the pain, which functions as an alarm signal. Nervous system safety is achieved through pain education and therapeutic approaches including mindfulness, self-compassion exercises, and emotional expression techniques including journaling.
Jordan Rynning
has been following this case for months, including interviewing the man at the center of allegations.
Published October 31, 2026 7:00 AM
Michael Angel Alvarez, 41, spoke with LAist on Sept. 16, 2026, about the federal body armor case against him being dismissed.
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Jordan Rynning
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LAist
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Topline:
The L.A. County District Attorney’s office dropped its felony body armor charges against Michael Angel Alvarez earlier this week. Alvarez was sentenced to time served on a lesser charge — a probation violation. He served more than 100 days in jail earlier this year while awaiting trial.
Most serious claims haven’t materialized: Though federal prosecutors made headlines claiming in court documents and on social media that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” they have not filed charges related to those claims.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office dropped its felony body armor charges against Michael Angel Alvarez on Wednesday. Alvarez was sentenced to time served on a lesser charge — a probation violation. He had served more than 100 days in jail earlier this year while awaiting trial.
Why Alvarez’s arrest made headlines: Alvarez was working as a city-contracted peace ambassador in MacArthur Park when he was arrested by federal agents in May. Federal and county prosecutors each brought felony charges against him, claiming he was in possession of body armor as a violent felon.
Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A., pointed to the case on social media to criticize city officials for allowing taxpayer money to be “shelled out to a convicted gang murderer.”
About his criminal record: Judges in federal and state court have now dismissed prosecutors’ felony charges against Alvarez, after U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found on Sept. 9 that Alvarez did not have a violent felony conviction. Alvarez was 15 when he committed a gang-related murder. He was tried and convicted as an adult in 2002. After a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court, and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served more than 20 years.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday, Oct. 7 that Republican Bill Essayli is not legally serving as the top U.S. prosecutor in Los Angeles.
The ruling is the latest roadblock to the Trump administration’s effort to extend handpicked acting U.S. attorneys beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law. The strategy was designed to bypass confirmation by the U.S. Senate — something that generally requires a degree of bipartisan support.
Essayli “is unlawfully serving as a ‘de facto’ United States Attorney,” U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright wrote.
The order won’t take effect until the court rules on the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal. Essayli said he doesn’t agree with the court’s order. He said the president and Attorney General “have every right to select supervisors within the Justice Department.”
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Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published October 31, 2026 5:00 AM
Myrna Velasco (left) performs as Dolores Huerta in “¡Sí Se Puede!” at Boyle Heights City Hall on April 2, 2026.
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Carlin Stiehl
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LAist
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Topline:
An all-ages play about the life of Dolores Huerta and other under-told stories of the farmworker labor movement is back on tour in Los Angeles.
The backstory: Center Theatre Group commissioned ¡Sí Se Puede! from Eliana Pipes in March 2025 and it debuted in L.A. this spring. “There's this perception that farm work was only done by men,” Pipes said. “There were women on the fields, there were women on the picket lines, and there were women in leadership in the United Farm Workers movement.”
An all-ages play about the life of Dolores Huerta and other under-told stories of the farmworker labor movement is back on tour in Los Angeles.
The show's extension had been announced prior to the news that Huerta died Wednesday, Oct. 28., at her Bakersfield home. She was 96 years old.
“There's this perception that farm work was only done by men,” said playwright Eliana Pipes. “There were women on the fields, there were women on the picket lines, and there were women in leadership in the United Farm Workers movement.”
Center Theatre Group commissioned ¡Sí Se Puede! from Pipes in March 2025 and it debuted in L.A. this spring.
CSULA seeks memories from underground music scenes
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
is an arts and general assignment reporter on LAist's Explore LA team.
Published October 31, 2026 5:00 AM
CSULA is seeking memorabilia from LA's underground music scenes for its research archives.
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Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State University, Los Angeles.
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Topline
There’s a whole world of underground Southern California music history that’s hidden in storage boxes — photos, fliers, cassettes and other memorabilia. Research librarians at the California State University, Los Angeles are holding a community archive event on Nov. 5 to ensure the cultural memory of L.A.’s underground music scenes are preserved for future generations.
Why it matters: The memorabilia are the physical remnants of the supportive L.A. communities built around music and enjoyment. But many of these objects languish out of sight, and run the risk of being lost, along with the memories attached to them.
Why now: For four years, archive staff have held an annual day to receive ephemera from the public. They're doing it again on Thursday, Nov. 5.
Read on… to hear how goth, rockabilly and other underground clubs in L.A. inspired the head archivist.
Right around the year 2000, there was a club night in Hollywood called Clockwork Orange. Fans of The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus and other bands came for the DJ’s mix of their favorite songs but also for a vibe that welcomed people regardless of race, ethnicity or sexual and gender identity.
“I was a pretty shy person, and so that was a place where I could sort of be myself and express myself,” said Azalea Camacho, a regular there in those days.
She had just graduated from Workman High School in the City of Industry and was also clubbing at rockabilly music nights in Rosemead and goth club nights in downtown L.A.
Camacho said there was lots of memorabilia from those times, such as photos taken in and outside the clubs, ticket stubs and promotional fliers. They're the physical remnants of those supportive communities built around music and enjoyment, but many of them languish in shoeboxes and storage units, at risk of being lost — along with the memories attached to them.
Cal State LA has hosted Sounds of the Underground Archive for the last four years. It's an opportunity for people to donate their underground music scene memorabilia.
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Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State University, Los Angeles
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“I think the danger is maybe those stories are not being told, or people don't know about the story,” she said.
Keeping stories alive
More than two decades later, Camacho is now in a position to make sure those stories are kept alive. She’s head of special collections and archives at the university library at California State University, Los Angeles.
Four years ago, she and library staff created an annual day for area residents to donate or digitize memorabilia for their Sounds of the Underground Archive. This year it's on Thursday, Nov. 5. They’ll accept physical donations, but they’ll also have a scanner to digitize printed material, so people can keep items that are precious to them.
SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND ARCHIVE
Date: Thursday, Nov. 5 Time: 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. Location: Cal State LA Library Community Room, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles
Camacho is hoping this year will bring in a bumper amount of memorabilia. It's taken time to get the word out, she said.
“From the actual community archiving day [we’ve collected] maybe 100 or less than 100 items. … It's not a lot,” she said.
She said they're on the lookout for a wide range of mementos, including:
Fliers
Handbills
Zines
Newsletters
Posters
Set lists
Photographs (prints, negatives or digital files)
Cassette tapes, CDs, or vinyl records
Ticket stubs
Wristbands
Band merchandise (stickers, buttons, patches, T-shirts)
DIY press kits or liner notes and correspondence (letters, emails, messages related to music scenes)
Venue or collective ephemera (membership cards, schedules, announcements and more)
