I love it when stories like this come out, it is a great demonstration of how the brain controls pain and the pain response. Even though that nail looks like it went directly through this man’s foot, it did not, it went between the toes, and yet he experienced SEVERE pain, as if the nail went through the foot bed.

Although a really annoying fact of life, pain lives solely in the brain, and is a figment of our imaginations. Pain is an interpretation of what signals our nervous system receives. In this case, it certainly LOOKS as if the nail has gone through the foot, so the pain signal goes to the brain, because the body wants to get our attention that we need to do something about it. It’s the same mechanism that is behind phantom limb pain and all sorts of other body responses “that don’t make sense.”

The body desperately wants to survive and be efficient and will do whatever it takes to get our attention. Because people respond really well to pain, that is an easy mechanism for the body to use. You can think of it as the body saying, “psst, hey you, something is wrong, and I need to you to stop your busy life and take care of it.” If you ignore the signal, the pain will intensify.

It’s one of the reasons why Z-Health works so well – pain is a signal, so to get rid of the pain we need to simply change the signal in a positive manner and the pain will go away. It’s why I can mobilize a hand to make shoulder pain go away, why working on a collarbone makes a hip feel better, etc.

So, the next time you are in pain, it may be that the nail really is going through your foot, or it may be something else entirely. Just don’t take it too literally.