As Pain Awareness Month draws to a close this September, Dr. Eric Anderson, a neurologist and Chief Medical Officer of Lin Health, the virtual health care company based in Denver, CO, is drawing attention to a critical but often misunderstood aspect of chronic pain: the nervous system's role in producing and perpetuating it. According to Dr. Anderson, pain is not simply a signal from damaged tissue but is always generated by the brain and nervous system. This distinction matters because it challenges the common misconception that pain without an obvious physical cause is imaginary. "When someone hears 'it's in your brain,' they often hear 'it's imaginary,'" Dr. Anderson says. "But it's quite the opposite. Your pain is very very real. It's generated by real circuits in a real nervous system."
The implications of this understanding are profound for the millions of people living with persistent pain. When the nervous system becomes oversensitive—a process known as central sensitization—even normally innocuous stimuli, like a light touch, can trigger pain. This means that effective treatment must go beyond addressing the part of the body that hurts. "Understanding this process opens up new ways of treating pain beyond simply treating the part of the body that hurts," Dr. Anderson explains. "And the nervous system is plastic, meaning that what it may have learned, it can unlearn. And I think that that is the most encouraging news in pain medicine right now."
Lin Health's brain-based approach is rooted in this modern clinical understanding. The company's virtual program matches each patient with a trained pain-recovery coach after a medical review, and then provides a personalized plan that incorporates evidence-based 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 ways of responding 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 and the Apple App Store.
The results reported by Lin Health underscore the potential of this approach. According to the company, 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 also 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 by delivering scalable, affordable care that is broadly covered by insurance.
For people living with chronic pain, the message of Pain Awareness Month is one of hope: by understanding the difference between where pain is felt and how it is processed, new doors to recovery may open. As Dr. Anderson and Lin Health continue to advocate for this paradigm shift, the focus moves from merely coping with pain to measurable recovery. More information about Lin Health's approach and outcomes is available at linhealth.onlinepresskit247.com.
