Book Review: 'My Bodyguard Brain – How Your Brain Uses Pain to Protect You'

Review of a practical resource providing children with ongoing pain (and their parents) information of the neurobiology of pain. The book ‘My Bodyguard Brain – How your brain uses pain to protect you’ explains why we feel pain. The brain makes pain when it notices any sort of danger. Pain is associated with acute injury but it can also be evoked by social interaction and unpleasant emotion that children don’t know how to deal with. The text and drawings explain in a child-friendly way how your ‘Bodyguard’ brain wants to look after you, and how it sometimes gets a bit ‘too good’ at that job. It is a book I would recommend for teachers and clinicians dealing with children experiencing chronic pain. Ongoing pain in children is a huge problem in society. Paediatric pain should matter to everyone. It affects approximately one quarter to one third of all children and adolescents. Children with chronic pain have often cut back all their normal activities like school, sports, social life and sleep. Almost 60% of these children become adults experiencing pain and 50% of the children with pain has a parent suffering from chronic pain. Understanding what you feel will turn the oversensitive alarm down and is the first step to improve the lives of children and adolescents with pain. Keywords: worry associated with pain; chronic stress; post-traumatic stress; child disability; epigenetic mechanisms; cognitive behavioural therap