PainScience.com • Good advice for aches, pains & injuries

How to share a link to this page on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc

PainScience.com does not use conventional “share buttons,” for reader privacy. To share an article on social media, please copy & paste a full or short link:

https://www.painscience.com/

PainScience.com/home
PainScience.com/painsci_front_page

Short links are simpler and clearer and ideal for many contexts where the full version is awkward:

  • Many social media posts, especially Instagram captions.
  • Graphics and presentation slides.
  • E-mail and text messaging.
  • Audio! If you want to tell someone about a link in a phone call or in a podcast interview, it is vastly easier to say, “Just go to PainScience.com slash home.”

Publish a link on your blog

For HTML links on a blog/website, please use the full URL (address) for this page shown above, including the www and https-with-an-s. Here are ready-to-use links in both HTML and Markdown ❐:

<a href='https://www.painscience.com/'>PainSci front page</a>

[PainSci front page](https://www.painscience.com/)

You can make the underlined clickable text whatever you want, of course, but it’s best to describe what you are linking to (rather than “this” or “click here”). For more detailed information, see my full guide to linking. ❐

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

< >
  • Photograph of a plain white bottle with the word “hope” on it, representing placebo.

    Placebo power hype

    Placebo is fascinating, but its “power” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is, however, an awful lot of ideologically motivated hype about placebo!

  • Drawing of a woman stretching her hands towards her toes in a seated position, with a painful expression on her face.

    Is stretching useful?

    My stretching article has been popular for more than a decade now & it’s one of the best examples of what this website is all about: thorough, sassy critical analysis & tipping over sacred cows with facts n stuff.

  • Drawing a volume knob labelled “pain” turned up to 11

    Fibromyalgia

    Controversy, stigma & quackery swirl around fibromyalgia like a bad smell. Here’s a rational guide to the mysterious disease of pain, exhaustion & mental fog.

  • Anatomical diagram of the knee showing the location of IT band syndrome pain on the side of the knee.

    What kind of runner’s knee?

    IT band syndrome dominates the side of the knee. Patellofemoral pain is more variable, but usually more in front.

  • Anatomical diagram of the thoracolumber fascia.

    Does fascia matter?

    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?

  • Stylized sign showing a man stooping to lift a box, with red text superimposed on it reading “alarmist nonsense.”

    Don’t Worry About Lifting Technique

    The importance of “lift with your legs, not your back” to prevent back pain has been exaggerated!

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

Drawing of a knob representing pain intensity, dialed up to 11.

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.

Recent site updates

A steady stream of content improvements and corrections are all logged, like on Wikipedia:

You’ve got a lot of reading to do! Sorry it’s all here on the computer …

Donate

If you’ve found PainScience.com useful, say thanks with a donation.