What works for stubborn aches, pains, and injuries?
And what doesn’t work, and why? PainScience.com reviews your treatment options for many common painful problems, and explains the nature of the pain beast with hundreds of articles and several particularly huge self-help guides. The site is written mainly for patients, but it’s also heavily referenced for health care pros. And I serve up the science of pain, injury, and rehab with a little sass — I try to have fun taking the subject seriously. Read more about PainScience.com.
~ Paul Ingraham, PainScience publisher
Supposedly fascia can get tight & needs to be “released,” but key examples of research either fail to support fascial therapy or even undermine it. Is it just a fad?
Muscle fever — such a wonderfully descriptive term — is that distinctive muscle pain that nearly everyone gets after intense exercise. How does it work & can anything help?
IT band syndrome dominates the side of the knee. Patellofemoral pain is more variable, but usually more in front.
Anatomy has limits. An owl can rotate its head as much as 270° & you can’t, because of differences between owl spines & people spines. There are biomechanical limits on all stretches … some more than others. This article describes 11 muscles you can’t stretch but wish you could.
Walk down a busy street in Canada, Russia, or northern Europe & you’ll pass someone with vitamin D deficiency every few seconds. And they may be in pain, too.
A little bit of inflammation spread all over the place is one possible culprit in chronic pain.
What hurts? Common painful problems and injuries
The main painful topics on PainScience are stubborn problems like trigger points (poorly named, but incredibly common, and often confused with muscle strain), low back pain (of course), common overuse injuries like iliotibial band syndrome, and stranger musculoskeletal glitches like frozen shoulder. Plus dozens more!
→ index of specific painful conditions
And what works? Pain treatments
Review of treatment methods (with plenty of debunking) is a major theme on PainScience.com: popular DIY options like self-massage, strength training, ice or heat, or the bizarrely controversial Epsom salts. I also review major therapy methods like massage or chiropractic, and gadgets like ultrasound and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS).
→ index of treatment & therapy reviews
→ master list of self-help tips for pain
Yes, but why does it hurt? The nature of the beast
Pain “demands an explanation,” wrote poet Ann Carson, but pain is weird. It can be a huge help to understand things like the types of pain, or how insomnia makes pain so much worse, or the role of chronic low-grade inflammation. On the other hand, there are also many over-rated causes of pain like misalignment and poor posture.
→ index of articles about how pain works
The microblog: pain science news & nuggets
I never stop updating and improving PainScience.com articles and books, hundreds of them, but also blog as I work. The blog is basically the “highlights” section of the site: mostly short posts about the niftiest ideas I’ve come across.
- May 6: Study finds jack shit (which is to be expected)
- May 3: Wax on, wax off
- May 1: Stretching chat with podiatrists
- May 1: “Massage parlour” ecommerce hijinks
- Apr 26: Maximally ungracious: straining to violate principle of charity
- + 835 more posts …
Recent site updates
A steady stream of content improvements and corrections are all logged, like on Wikipedia:
- May 22: neck pain +Improved — A thorough editing and cleanup, with some information added, most notably the most positive science on the topic.
Save Yourself from Neck Pain! - May 20: functional frozen shoulder +Added an article summary.
The Role of “Spasm” in Frozen Shoulder - May 19: massage and circulation +Added new section about deep vein thrombosis.
Does Massage Increase Circulation? - May 14: massage therapy +Upgraded, psychological effects of massage — Significantly expanded on the discussion of how massage might have profound psychological significance to people.
Does Massage Therapy Work? - May 13: relationship between stiffness and range of motion +Comprehensive editing with many improvements and clarifications.
Why Do Muscles Feel Stiff and Tight? - + many more
You’ve got a lot of reading to do! Sorry it’s all here on the computer …
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