Chronic pain can be debilitating and frustrating, especially among aging adults.

While physical remedies and treatments can provide some relief, experts have found that shifting one’s mindset — or the way the brain approaches pain — can actually ease the discomfort.

Dr. Daniel Amen, a California-based psychiatrist and founder of Amen Clinics, has studied how changing the brain can help defeat chronic pain, as shared in his new book, “Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain.”

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In an on-camera interview with Fox News Digital, Amen noted that many people don’t know that chronic pain doesn’t just live in the joints, the knees or the back.

“If it’s been around for more than three weeks, it is now living in your brain,” he said. “There are actually circuits in your brain that feel pain. They feel both physical pain and emotional pain.”

Some medications that treat depression are FDA-approved for chronic pain, treating both emotional and physical imbalances, according to Amen.

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“It’s because they work on the same circuits in the brain,” he said. “The healthier your brain is, the less physical pain and emotional pain you’ll be in.”

That doesn’t mean, however, someone is “making up” the discomfort in their head, the psychiatrist emphasized.

If the brain — which is an organ like any other — begins to work too hard in certain areas, or not hard enough, finding ways to balance it can ease pain and calm the whole body, Amen noted.

In his book, he introduces the “doom loop” — chronic pain activates the suffering circuit in the brain, which then triggers negativity and muscle tension, followed by bad habits.

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“It gets you into the spiral … Your brain is out of control,” Amen said. “Which means if you have back pain, all the muscles around that inflamed area are clamping down and making you hurt even more.”

“It doesn’t mean you won’t need surgery — it just means it’s going to be a lot more effective if you get your back and your brain working together.”

“The healthier your brain is, the less physical pain and emotional pain you’ll be in.”

For people dealing with chronic pain, Amen recommends first checking in on the health of the brain.

“Ask yourself, ‘What does the pain mean to you?’” he suggested, adding that the biggest worry around pain is often the fear of losing freedom.

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Pain is often a symptom of repressed rage, Amen said, citing rehabilitation physician and chronic pain author John Sarno.

“Repressed emotions have to go somewhere, and they in fact go to the pain circuits in your brain that can then activate back pain, knee pain, neck pain,” he shared.

The doctor suggested a practice he calls “emotional freedom,” which involves journaling about every five-year span of your life, writing down what happened during those blocks of time. This can include positive experiences, or moments of sorrow and anguish.

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“You really get a sense of where these repressed emotions could be,” he said.

Keeping a positive attitude and optimistic outlook can also suppress anger, therefore relieving pain, the doctor added.

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A large-scale international study found that creative activities such as music, dance, painting and even certain video games may help keep the brain biologically “younger.”

Researchers from 13 countries — including teams at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and SWPS University in Poland — analyzed brain data from more than 1,400 adults of all ages worldwide and found that those who regularly pursue creative hobbies show brain patterns that appear younger than their actual age.

Even short bursts of creative activity, such as a few weeks of strategy-based video gaming, had noticeable benefits, according to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications in October.

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Scientists collected brain data from people with advanced experience in tango, music, visual art and strategy gaming, but they also recruited non-experts for comparison. In addition, a third group of beginners underwent short-term training in StarCraft II, a strategy video game, so researchers could see how learning a new creative skill affects the brain over just a few weeks.

All participants underwent EEG and MEG brain scans that were fed into machine-learning “brain age” models, or brain clocks, which estimate how old the brain appears biologically versus chronologically. Researchers then used advanced computer models to explore why creativity might protect the brain and found that the hobbies help strengthen the networks responsible for coordination, attention, movement and problem-solving, which can weaken with age.

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People with years of creative practice showed the strongest reductions in brain age, but even beginners saw improvements, with strategy games boosting brain-age markers after roughly 30 hours of training.

“One of our key takeaways is that you do not need to be an expert to benefit from creativity,” Dr. Carlos Coronel, first author and postdoctoral fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin and Universidad Adolfo Ibanez, said in a statement. “Indeed, we found that learners gained from brief video game training sessions.”

According to the researchers, this was the first large-scale evidence directly linking multiple creative fields to slower brain aging, though previous research has linked creativity to improved mood and well-being.

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“Creativity emerges as a powerful determinant of brain health, comparable to exercise or diet,” senior author Dr. Agustin Ibanez of Trinity College Dublin said in a statement. “Our results open new avenues for creativity-based interventions to protect the brain against aging and disease.”

Dr. Aneta Brzezicka of SWPS University added that the findings suggest that creative pastimes should be incorporated into educational and healthcare programs as tools to support brain health.

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The study also showed that brain clocks, a relatively new tool gaining steam in neuroscience, can be used to monitor interventions aimed at improving brain health, Ibanez said.

The researchers cautioned, however, that the results are early and come with caveats, including that most participants were healthy adults, many subgroups were small and the study didn’t track people long-term to see whether younger-looking brains actually lead to lower dementia risk or better daily functioning.

“The brain clock, in preliminary studies, shows promise and accounts for the diversity of the factors that can contribute to that wide disparity between our brain age and chronological age,” Dr. Jon Stewart Hao Dy, a board-certified adult neurologist from the Philippines, told Fox News Digital. 

“However, it’s important for the public to know that brain health is influenced by a multitude of factors that cause a wide brain age gap,” added Dy, who was not involved in the study. 

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Creative people often have other advantages, the researchers noted, such as higher education, robust social lives and better access to arts and activities, and the study couldn’t fully separate those factors from the effects of creativity itself.

“Evidence shows that dancing, painting, pottery, embroidery and even museum visits confer the greatest neuroprotection in preserving cognition and improving cognitive function in older adults,” Dy said.

And he agreed that the science is strong enough to justify action. 

“It’s a matter of translating it into public policy that will fund and support these programs,” he said. 

The work, funded by academic and public research bodies, will now be followed by more comprehensive studies that add other creative fields and link brain-age measures to real-world outcomes such as memory, thinking skills and disease risk.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the study authors for comment.