As Pain Awareness Month draws to a close this September, Dr. Eric Anderson, Neurologist and Chief Medical Officer of Lin Health, the virtual health care company based in Denver, CO, is drawing attention to a fundamental yet often misunderstood aspect of chronic pain: the nervous system. "Pain is always produced by the brain and the nervous system," says Dr. Anderson. "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."
This distinction matters because it shifts the focus from merely treating the site of pain to addressing how the nervous system processes and responds to pain signals. In chronic pain, that processing can become maladaptive, leading to a condition called central sensitization. "With chronic pain, that interpretation can contribute to the nervous system becoming oversensitive," Dr. Anderson explains. "When this happens, even something that normally wouldn't hurt, like a light touch, can trigger a pain response."
The implications are profound. Understanding central sensitization opens up new treatment avenues beyond simply treating the part of the body that hurts. "And the nervous system is plastic, meaning that what it may have learned, it can unlearn," says Dr. Anderson. "And I think that that is the most encouraging news in pain medicine right now." This neuroplasticity underpins Lin Health's brain-based approach, which combines modern clinical understanding with evidence-based behavioral therapies.
Lin Health's program is delivered virtually, matching each patient with a trained pain-recovery coach following a medical review. Patients receive a personalized plan that incorporates therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), among others. These approaches help patients understand how pain is processed, reduce fear and reactivity around symptoms, and develop new responses to pain. Patients engage in weekly live sessions and in-app messaging, with access to daily exercises through the Lin Health app, available on the Google Play Store for Android and 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. The company currently holds a 4.8 rating on TrustPilot.com. These outcomes suggest that targeting the nervous system can be highly effective, yet such interventions remain inaccessible to most patients because they are high-touch and not included in standard medical training. Lin Health aims to bridge that gap with scalable, affordable care that is broadly covered by insurance.
During Pain Awareness Month, Dr. Anderson and Lin Health are bringing greater attention to the nervous system's role in chronic pain. For the millions living with persistent pain, understanding that pain is real and that the nervous system can be retrained could open the door to substantially more effective treatment. As Dr. Anderson emphasizes, the plasticity of the nervous system offers hope that what has been learned can be unlearned, marking a significant shift in pain medicine.
