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Hi Jules, Thanks for sharing your story! I developed very similar arm-and-hand pain symptoms before recovering in a similar fashion. And thanks for linking to my film! :)

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I bought your film too, it was excellent! You did yeoman's work with that one.

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That's a cool story. Read this and thought of you: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/

v tempting explanation.

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Wow! Just got to reading this. Fascinating. So if psychosomatic pain (I *think* that's what Sarno labels TMS as) is the opposite of the placebo effect and the placebo effect is "adjusting pain based on top-down priors", then psychosomatic pain would be adjusting pain based on bottom up priors. I don't quite see how that would work if bottom up priors are simply sense data. But I guess that's a good reason to buy the book :)

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I think placebo is pretty broad but I also need to buy the book. I'm guessing the explanation is going to go something like: at some point you started interpreting some neuronal noise as pain. Maybe all of the right conditions were there where the top down stream predicted you should feel this chronic pain, and so the bottom-up stream cooked the books (just like with illusions, for instance) and you felt pain. And on and on until you encountered explanations of psychosomatic pain and placebo'd yourself into not predicting pain from the noise.

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I like that theory. Weirdly enough I'm experience a whole new suite of pain that has nothing to do with joints. I was about to go the whole Dr. route, get my hormones checked etc. and then I decided to ignore the symptoms for a while and see where I land. Day two since making that decision and the pain is at about 50%, so I think I'm on to something.

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Neat! You know what's also neat:

https://twitter.com/jagarikin/status/1387910362826121217

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Hotdamn! The brain is...really something else.

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Woah buddy I never heard the whole story in such detail; thanks for sharing. Reading your stuff has become a highlight so don't stop writing!

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Damn girl, I didn't know about the vodka sipping and weeping. Glad you figured this out and then passed it on to me. Good stuff.

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Me too frand :)

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