Why chronic pain makes everything louder

Hi,

A while back I broke the ball of my foot, and on bad days it still lets me know. The weird part is that on those days everything else gets louder too. The dishwasher. Paul chewing.

I figured I was just cranky. Turns out researchers right here in Colorado have a better explanation.

A team at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine put 142 adults with chronic back pain and 51 people without it through brain scans while they listened to sounds. The people with chronic back pain reacted to the sounds more intensely than 84% of the pain-free group. The extra reaction showed up in parts of the brain tied to emotion, with less activity in the areas that normally help calm things down. Their brains had turned the volume up on more than just pain.

The hopeful part: participants who went through pain reprocessing therapy, a talk-based approach that teaches the brain to read pain signals as less of a threat, saw their sound sensitivity come down along with those brain responses. The study was published in Annals of Neurology this spring.

Worth being honest about the limits. The researchers don't know yet whether the sensitivity comes first or the pain does, and they only tested sound. Nobody studied float tanks here either.

But it does make me think about our Fort Collins floaters, so many of whom come in for back pain and sore feet. A float room is about as quiet as it gets for a body that's been on high alert. I've watched a lot of people walk out of that room moving differently than they walked in.

a sanctuary where silence meets innovation - samanafloat.com

The Weekly Reset

Here's this week's practice, the one thing I'd actually ask you to try.

Pick one stretch of your day this week, your commute or the first twenty minutes after work, and do it with nothing playing. No podcast, no TV in the background. Just let your ears have a break and notice what the rest of your body does with it.

This week's line to carry with you: I'm allowed to turn the volume down.

For the ones working overtime right now

This one's for everyone squeezing the last trail days out of October while already doing squats for ski season.

Your knees have opinions about this plan. Your feet probably do too. If you go straight from the last hike to the first ski day without any recovery in between, your body has a way of scheduling that recovery for you, usually at the worst possible time.

A float takes the weight off every joint at once. It's the closest thing I know to hitting pause between seasons.

Dig Deeper

Why chronic back pain makes everyday sounds harsher CU Anschutz researchers found people with chronic back pain reacted to sounds more strongly than 84% of pain-free people, and that pain reprocessing therapy brought that sensitivity down. Published in Annals of Neurology, March 2026.

The Colorado therapy that changed how people think about back pain An earlier CU Anschutz study of 151 adults: 66% of those who got pain reprocessing therapy reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free, compared to 20% in the placebo group. Published in JAMA Network Open, 2024, so not brand new, but it's the backstory to this week's study.

For the feet people Cleveland Clinic's rundown of heel pain, including plantar fasciitis, the most common cause, and the at-home options worth trying before anything more involved.

This week's meditation

A free, guided practice worth carrying into your week, hand-picked from a source we actually trust.

Unwinding the Body: Softening into Presence, by Jack Kornfield Completely free, recorded at Spirit Rock with soft music underneath. A gentle practice for letting go of the tension you've been carrying without noticing, which is most of us, most weeks.

Give yourself an hour

Book a float this week, in Denver or Fort Collins. Or go to bed twenty minutes earlier tonight and see how tomorrow feels.

Come Say Hi

Come hang out with us between issues. Find Heather on Instagram, Samana Float on Instagram, or Samana Float on Facebook.

— Heather