Articles Index
A searchable, sortable list of all featured articles and guides on PainScience.com
See also: indexes of articles by condition, treatment or concepts & principles • the blog (short posts only) • sitemap • what’s new
Type topics like “back pain” or “stretching” into the search box. Keywords are suggested as you type — choose one, or ignore them and type anything.EXAMPLEExample: To find featured and controversial articles about back pain, you want to enter “featured, back, controversial” — but you don’t have to type it all. First type “feat” and then press enter to autocomplete the “featured” keyword. The list now only contains featured articles. Now type “bac” and press enter to completed the “back” tag. Finally type “contr” and choose the “controversial” keyword. The list now contains more than 200 articles that each have at least one of these tags, but the ones with two or three sort to the top. The list always sorts to show the best matches for your search at the top, but you can re-sort the list. There are many tags, like “fun” and “research.” MORE TAGSTag (keyword) suggestions popup as you type. Start typing knee pain and you’ll see that there are many items about knee pain! There are many other subject matter tags for all kinds of painful problems, like back pain, more for treatments like massage or chiropractic, plus dozens of other kinds of tags. Try typing size to pick a size tag. Searching for featured articles is a good way of finding the best. Some other useful tags are tags for specific areas: leg, head, knee, etc. Or tags for the tone of a post: fun, debunkery, deep for mind blowing items.
- INCLUDE date, words, subtitles
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The Pressure Question in Massage Therapy+ There is no clear justification for painfully intense “deep tissue” massage, and it’s actually hazardous to many patients, but the pressure question is greatly complicated by the fascinating paradox of “good” pain, wildly varied patient pain tolerance and preferences (often timidly repressed), and popular faith in the “no pain, no gain” principle. “Good pain” is at the heart of the pressure question: a strange, potent sensory paradox that many people actually seek out as the goal of therapy, consciously or unconciously. Either it isn’t literally painful (just intense), or it’s painful but desired anyway because of relief or belief: an actual biological relief or at least the belief that there is one. But it’s important to note that not all satisfying, relieving sensations are genuinely helpful (e.g. scratching a mosquito bite). “Bad pain” is unpleasant but manageable and probably safe — tolerate it cautiously, to a point. “Ugly pain” is dangerous both physically and neurologically, causing a “fight or flight” reaction — always avoid it. People do have clear pressure preferences: they often fire massage therapists who give treatments that are too painful or too fluffy. Pressure that’s fine for you may cause severe pain, emotional distress, “sensory injury” (sensitization) in others, or even physical injury, so pressure should be customized but often isn’t. Brutal massages might be appreciated or even helpful, but most people can’t tell the difference between the kind of pain that might be a necessary part of therapy, and ugly pain that is just abusive and dangerous. Some possible justifications for painfully intense massage (these aren’t endorsements) include the destruction of motor end plates to “de-activate” trigger points; somatoemotional release (pain often strongly “resonates” with strong emotions like grief); moving tissue fluids; or just creating a strong, novel sensory experiences (which may have many subtle benefits). What’s the right amount of pressure to apply to muscles in massage therapy and self-massage? |
updated Nov 1, 24Nov '24 | 6,500 | |
Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work?+ Ultrasound and shockwave therapy use sound and/or pressure waves to warm and vibrate tissues with various problems, especially musculoskeletal problems like sprains, tendinitis, bursitis. They don’t work at all, or not very well for most people, most of them, with possible but somewhat unlikely and unconfirmed exceptions for some specific conditions when the settings are just right. Ultrasound has been a popular therapy for decades, its use so widespread that it almost defines physical therapy. It is mostly thought of as a method of deep heating, like putting on a heating pad that can reach deeper into the tissue, though it is also assumed to be generally “stimulating.” Unfortunately, although mainstream, this is not as scientific and evidence-based a treatment as most people assume, making it one of the best examples of a “pseudo-quackery”: dubious and disproven therapies with mainstream acceptance, often technological in nature. It has been condemned, or damned with faint praise, by one scientific review after another for decades now. Authors have almost nothing good to say about ultrasound or the evidence about it. Conclusions like this (van der Windt et al.) are the rule: “As yet, there seems to be little evidence to support the use of ultrasound therapy in the treatment of musculoskeletal disorders.” Shockwave therapy is slowly replacing ultrasound: higher tech and more expensive, but also often more painful, and still unproven for any condition. There are putatively positive studies of shockwave therapy for several conditions, but all are flawed and dubious, and there plenty of negative ones as well. Which is hardly surprising, because shockwave therapy is, somewhat amusingly, essentially just a very high-frequency massage “gun.” These treatment modalities seem mainstream, but warming and vibrating tissues with sound/pressure waves has never been supported by good evidence |
updated Oct 31, 24Oct '24 | 6,500 | |
The Insomnia Guide for Chronic Pain Patients+ Serious insomnia, chronic and intense, is nothing to mess around with. Pain and insomnia in particular are trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, each causing the other. Fortunately, insomnia is often basically a bad habit that responds well to behavioural conditioning (just be sure to eliminate medical causes of sleep troubles first, especially the common sneakier ones like delayed sleep phase syndrome). There are many simple ways to improve sleep “hygiene” (rituals and behaviours that affect sleep) and the challenge is mainly in being thorough and consistent. Sleep compression therapy is more difficult but critical: temporarily cramming sleep into limited hours to force consistent, habit-building timing of falling asleep and (especially) waking up. Serious insomnia-fighting advice from a veteran of the sleep wars |
updated Oct 27, 24Oct '24 | 12,000 | |
Strength Training for Pain & Injury Rehab Why building muscle is easier, better, and more important than you thought, and its role in recovering from injuries and chronic pain | updated Oct 26, 24Oct '24 | 11,000 | |
Tennis Elbow Guide+Tennis elbow is a classic but surprisingly mysterious repetitive strain injury to the muscles and tendons on the back of the arm and outside of the elbow, the wrist and finger extensors. This detailed guide explores the nature of the beast and reviews all treatment options. Not just for tennis players! A detailed, science-based tour of the nature of the beast and reviews of all the treatment options | updated Oct 25, 24Oct '24 | 15,000 | |
Complete Guide to Frozen Shoulder+ Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) is a common, disabling, painful loss of shoulder movement. The “adhesive” description is standard but wrong: the fibrous capsule doesn’t get stuck, but rather shrinks and thickens, a contracture. The cause of this is a mystery, but intriguingly it happens to people with diabetes much more. It can also be triggered by immobility, an underuse injury (instead of the much more common overuse injury). The joint is clearly mechanically stuck in many patients, but it’s also possible it gets neurologically shut down. Fortunately, frozen shoulders usually thaw, but it can take months, years, or even be permanent. Although usually easy to diagnose, frozen shoulder does often get confused with other conditions. Treatment is difficult and varies with the stage of the condition. The usual non-surgical treatments include pain-killers and steroid (oral or injected), exercise, and “forcing the issue” with manipulations. Massage may be helpful in some cases, and there’s some hope that anti-inflammatory nutrition might be useful. Surgical options include ripping or cutting the adhesions, but only make sense for the worst cases. An extremely detailed science-based guide to one of the strangest of all common musculoskeletal problems, for both patients and pros |
updated Oct 23, 24Oct '24 | 55,000 | |
The Chiropractic Controversies+ The chiropractic profession has a long history of scientific and ethical controversies swirling around it. Why is chiropractic perpetually contentious?
Many chiropractors share these concerns. The profession is strongly divided between progressives and traditionalists — though even some of the "progressives" aren't exactly good practitioners of evidence-based medicine, and it’s hard for patients to see even the biggest differences. But at the centre of all the controversy is a service that many people are happy to pay for: a spinal joint “pop” can be satisfying, like “scratching an itch you can’t reach.” Whatever explains this, and whether its medically meaningful or not, I believe it’s the main source of the popularity of the service over so many decades — though of course it also has a lot to do with rejection of medicine. An introduction to chiropractic controversies like aggressive billing, treating kids, and neck manipulation risks |
updated Oct 22, 24Oct '24 | 10,000 | |
Placebo Power Hype+Placebo is fascinating, but its “power” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: the power of belief is strictly limited and accounts for only a modest portion of what we think of as “the” placebo effect (if any at all). Placebo is mostly a shorthand for a bunch of nonspecific effects and research artifacts, not mentally-mediated healing miracles. There is a lot of ideologically motivated hype about placebo, because the idea of near-magical placebo potency can make a treatment look more efficacious than it actually is. But the placebo response isn’t actually all that impressive … not even for pain. All evidence, as of 2024, clearly shows that even placebo analgesia is weak on average, with plausible but unknown potential in ideal circumstances, or even the possibility that it doesn’t exist at all. The placebo effect is fascinating, but its “power” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be | updated Oct 21, 24Oct '24 | 13,000 | |
Psoas, So What?+The iliopsoas muscle (“illy-oh so-ass”) is a two-in-one hip flexing pair, mostly only palpable through the guts. Its clinical importance is often curiously exaggerated, but sometimes it does need a massage. Massage therapy for the psoas major and iliacus (iliopsoas) muscles is not that big a deal | updated Oct 16, 24Oct '24 | 2,750 | |
Guide to Repetitive Strain Injuries+Repetitive strain injuries have (at least) five surprising features: (1) they aren’t exactly “inflamed” despite giving that strong impression, (2) they are mostly not caused by biomechanical failures or alignment problems, (3) even stubborn cases usually just need more rest (more specifically, savvy “load management” erring on the side of less in the short term), (4) they are routinely complicated by muscle pain, and, the weirdest of the bunch, (5) they play “head games” to a shocking degree (that is, they are profoundly modulated by the central nervous system, both psychological factors we can affect and neurological ones we can’t). Five surprising and important ideas about repetitive strain injuries for patients and professionals | updated Oct 9, 24Oct '24 | 19,000 | |
Progressive Training How to take “baby steps” to recovery from an injury or pain problem | updated Oct 9, 24Oct '24 | 3,250 | |
What Works for Chronic Pain? A skeptical roundup of all the disappointingly small selection of effective chronic pain treatments (or the least bad ineffective ones) | updated Sep 30, 24Sep '24 | 9,500 | |
The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome+ PFPS is a common kneecap pain problem — and yet almost universally misunderstood. Patients are often given exactly the wrong advice. There is no miracle cure for patellar pain, but this tutorial is much more detailed than anything else you can find, weighing in at 40,000 words. Both patients and pros can greatly improve their understanding of the options — and maybe that is a kind of miracle. Inspired by the work of surgeon Scott Dye and firmly grounded in readable analysis of the science. An extremely detailed guide to rehab from patellofemoral pain syndrome (aka runner’s knee), with thorough reviews of every treatment option |
updated Sep 19, 24Sep '24 | 117,500 | |
Pain is Weird+ Modern pain science shows that pain is as hard to predict or control as the weather, a function of countless chaotic variables, a volatile sensation that is surprisingly disconnected from many seemingly “obvious” causes of pain. There are many fascinating cases of relatively painless trauma, and relatively trauma-less pain. Pain is not just jostled by many systemic variables, but especially the potent perceptual filters of the brain. Pain is 100% brain-generated, and threat signals from damaged tissues are only one factor of many that the brain integrates before we experience the pain. The brain thoroughly “tunes” pain, and often even overprotectively exaggerates it — so much so that a false alarm tendency (“sensitization”) can be more serious and chronic than whatever triggered the alarm in the first place. None of this means that pain is “all in your head,” but it does mean that psychology and context has a profound influence on pain. If the brain controls all pain, does that mean that we can think pain away? Probably not, because conscious minds are not the boss of our much busier brains. However, we do have some “neurological leverage” — we can probably influence pain, indirectly, if only we understand it. Patients and professionals alike need to get past the simplistic notion that pain is a reflexive and proportionate reaction to tissue insult. It’s routinely weirder than that. Pain science reveals a volatile, misleading sensation that comes entirely from an overprotective brain, not our tissues |
updated Sep 16, 24Sep '24 | 16,000 | |
Quite a Stretch+ Stretching is not a pillar of fitness and wellness and does not deserve its immense popularity. It may be paired with more useful exercise, and it does feel good, of course, and it will increase flexibility — mainly by increasing sensory tolerance rather than actually changing tissue. But flexibility is an overrated goal (even for most athletes), which can also easily achieved with other kinds of exercise that are much more beneficial for fitness in other ways (e.g. end-range strengthening). No other assumed benefit of stretching has ever been demonstrated scientifically — not using any method, no matter how allegedly “advanced.” Almost everything people expect from stretching just doesn’t work: it doesn’t warm you up, prevent soreness or injury, contribute meaningfully to rehab, or enhance performance. But it can cause fairly serious injuries, and impair a performance a bit. Regardless of efficacy, stretching is also very time-consuming; “proper” technique is controversial at best; and many key muscles are just biomechanically impossible to stretch in any case (like most of the quadriceps group, which runners never believe without diagrams). Finally, despite the fact that stretching feels so good, it is not clearly a reliable treatment for any common kind of chronic pain. At best, it appears to be provide some symptom control for diseases that cause spasticity. It falls especially flat where expectations are highest: it isn’t an effective therapy for back pain. It cannot even fix poor posture, a scapegoat for a lot of pain (and badly overhyped). Stretching science has shown that this extremely popular form of exercise has almost no measurable benefits |
updated Sep 16, 24Sep '24 | 35,000 | |
Chronic Pain and Inequality The role of racism, sexism, queerphobia, ageism, and poverty in health and chronic pain | updated Sep 8, 24Sep '24 | 4,000 | |
Cramps, Spasms, Tremors & Twitches+ Many popular ideas about spasm are wrong or no more than half-right. For instance, exercise-induced cramps are not caused by dehydration or magnesium deficiency, “stiffness” is rarely caused by literally tight muscles, and muscles don’t actually go limp in anaesthesia. Spasm is an informal and vague term used to describe many pains that often have little or nothing to do with muscle contraction. For instance, there’s probably no such thing as a “back spasm,” no vicious cycle of “pain-spasm-pain,” and the idea of a painfully “protective” spasm or “muscle splinting” is an oversimplification at best. Several familiar types of unwanted muscle contractions or “spasm” are explored in this article: exertional cramps, night cramps, menstrual cramps, dystonia, spasticity, fasciculations (twitches), tremors, clonus, myoclonus, myokymia, tetany. Some more controversial or vague notions about spasm are also discussed (“trigger points” and “stiffness” and “muscle” splinting), and some conditions where the role of spasm is hopelessly unclear (like vaginismus, back pain, and headache). Although some kinds of spasm clearly do cause considerable suffering, it’s unclear that there is any such a thing as a painful spasm that isn’t obviously a spasm: strong enough to hurt, but not strong enough to be otherwise felt or seen (like a typical calf cramp). A painful-yet-stealthy spasm like this might explain a lot of common aches and pains, and many people assume they exist, but the topic is almost perfectly unexplored scientifically. As a general rule, there are no effective treatments for most kinds of spasm, but it depends on the type of spasm. For instance, the article includes an anecdote about successfully treating eyelid twitching. There actually is an evidence-based hiccup cure. Botox can be highly effective in specific cases. But the “muscle relaxant” drugs are a bit of a joke; sedatives and paralytics are the only true “muscle relaxants.” Magnesium is helpful for some, but most cramps aren’t caused by magnesium deficiency, and deficiency doesn’t clearly cause cramps. The biology and treatment of unwanted muscle contractions |
updated Sep 6, 24Sep '24 | 12,000 | |
Zapped! Does TENS work for pain?+ Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) tries to treat pain by passing alternating current through superficial tissues causing tingling sensations, with brief and minor benefits that are probably just a “sensation-enhanced” placebo. It has been a therapeutic staple in physical therapy and chronic pain clinics for decades, and there are many consumer TENS gadgets. They are safe and fairly cheap at about $100 for a typical TENS unit. It’s not as scientific as it seems, but it may not be useless either: interesting sensations can always get something done when presented in the right way to patients. The tingling and vibrating might “drown out” pain, “distract” the nervous system from it, or get the brain to “reconsider” pain. It’s remotely possible that TENS stimulates actual tissue behaviour change (healing) and not just sensation. In theory, the right setting could make all the difference, which makes the topic endlessly debatable, even though most TENS obviously doesn’t work many miracles. There’s not much evidence that TENS helps pain and it’s surprisingly well-studied as these things go. Despite this, some experts remain optimistic that the right TENS for the right kind of pain could still be good medicine. There are many other electrotherapies. Electrical muscle stimulation (instead of nerve) might help keep muscles fit during rehab from injuries. Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) is a fascinating cousin of TENS that might stimulate cellular repair. Spinal cord and brain stimulation using surgically implanted electrodes is basically “deep TENS.” Old-timey galvanic baths were whole body stimulation, “spasm baths” with no clear purpose. People do seem like to like shocking themselves! The peculiar popularity of being gently zapped with electrical stimulation therapy |
updated Aug 28, 24Aug '24 | 10,000 | |
The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain+ There are thousands of low back pain books — what’s special about this one? The problem is that 90% of doctors and therapists assume that back pain is structural, in spite of mountains of scientific evidence showing … exactly the opposite. Only a few medical experts understand this, and fewer still are writing for patients and therapists. Supported by 702 footnotes, this tutorial is the most credible and clarifying low back pain information you can find. An extremely detailed guide to the myths, controversies, and treatment options for low back pain |
updated Aug 22, 24Aug '24 | 217,500 | |
38 Surprising Causes of Pain Trying to understand pain when there is no obvious explanation | updated Aug 21, 24Aug '24 | 18,000 | |
Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation+ Chronic, subtle, systemic inflammation may be a factor in stubborn musculoskeletal pain and arthritis. We get more inflamed as we age, a process quaintly known as “inflammaging” (for real). That trend correlates with poor fitness and obesity (metabolic syndrome, the biological precursor to diabetes and heart disease). And that, in turn is linked to chronic psychological stress, and of course biological stresses like smoking and sleep deprivation. Basically, the “harder” we live, the more inflammaging we suffer from. It’s unclear whether metabolic syndrome is inflammatory, or inflammation causes metabolic syndrome, or if it’s a vicious cycle. There are several other unproven but plausible reasons why inflammation escalates as we age, such as the accumulation of permanent minor infections, lasting collateral damage from past infections (essentially autoimmune disease and allergies that are too subtle or nonspecific to diagnose), and environmental poisons. Systemic inflammation cannot be diagnosed or treated reliably by any means: it is simply too complicated and mysterious. It could have seven different causes, most of them untreatable even if you could confirm them. Nevertheless, it is a trendy bogeyman, and there are lots of popular, over-hyped ideas about how to treat it, especially “anti-inflammatory diets.” For chronic pain patients, such methods may be worth trying, but it’s important to understand that they are far from proven. Probably the best overall defense against inflammation is simply to be as fit and healthy as possible. One possible sneaky cause of puzzling chronic pain |
updated Aug 19, 24Aug '24 | 21,000 | |
Reluctantly Reconsidering RESTORE An in-depth analysis of the RESTORE trial of Cognitive Functional Therapy for back pain | updated Jul 25, 24Jul '24 | 8,500 | |
Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements for Pain & Healing+ Many nutritional supplements, vitamins, and minerals, are taken like drugs as a treatment for muscles and joints and aches and pains: the “nutraceuticals,” like glucosamine, creatine, curcumin, protein powders, and several others. Most are considered either anti-inflammatory and/or something that promotes tissue repair/growth. But most make little sense as pain treatments even in principle, and supplement science in general has been extremely disappointing and even ominous, due to the discovery of risks and serious problems with quality control in a virtually unregulated industry that is just as profitable as “Big Pharma,” and more corrupt by many measures (even just on the basis of the massive involvement multi-level marketing, a fundamentally fraudulent business model). Glucosamine (taken mainly for arthritis) is the most popular supplement, and has been slammed by multiple large and decisively negative trials. Creatine is actually effective, but mainly for muscle fatigue resistance for intense weightlifting — probably irrelevant to pain. There are some rays of hope for Vitamin D, magnesium, curcumin, and omega-3 fatty acids. Probiotics for dysbiosis are interesting and have some real potential principle, but in practice don’t seem to be doing much for most pain patients. But there isn’t one single supplement that is clearly beneficial for any common kind of pain. But I explore the science and the safety of every popular option, and some more obscure ones too. Critical analysis of most popular “nutraceuticals” — food-like pseudo-medicines taken for medicinal purposes, especially glucosamine and creatine, mostly as they relate to pain, arthritis, and recovery from exercise and injury |
updated Jul 24, 24Jul '24 | 21,000 | |
Bone on Bone+Are the words “bone-on-bone” harmfully intimidating, a “nocebo”? What if BOB is just the truth, an accurate description of the state of a joint? And how often is BOB actually true? This ubiquitous, melodramatic pseudo-diagnosis is routinely an exaggeration of the state of the joint, which often cannot even be known with any precision. It spooks people into unnecessary surgeries for a condition that is often not as bad BOB makes it sound. It also scares away people from exercising, for fear of wear and tear that is not actually a problem for arthritis, while inactivity actually does make arthritis worse — and much else. Nevertheless, severe arthritis does exist, BOB can be a truthful description of it, and people generally find frankness validating and reassuring. While it’s clear that BOB can be a nocebo, much depends on how it is used. The term is so common that there’s a case for using it with reassuring context, before another clinician uses it more carelessly! How often are those dirty words about arthritis a harmful exaggeration? And should we ever use them, even when it’s accurate? | new Jul 4, 24Jul '24 | 7,000 | |
Knee Replacement Surgery Doubts Is it legit? Knee replacement is extremely popular, but it (still) isn’t evidence-based medicine | updated Jul 4, 24Jul '24 | 2,500 | |
DMSO for Pain+ The notorious and fascinating chemical dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is a strange compound that straddles alternative and mainstream medicine with a few legitimate medical applications and a lot of highly speculative ones — including just being a pain-killer in its own right, which has made it been popular with athletes for decades, but (shocker) there is no persuasive evidence that it actually works for that. Although considered non-toxic, especially when diluted, “it’s complicated” and DMSO has a long list of known and theoretical side effects and safety concerns. DMSO is an organic solvent that passes easily through both skin and cell membranes, and so it can rapidly diffuse through the whole body, carrying some other compounds and drugs dissolved in it. This superpower means that it has both complex medical potential and could also be quite unsafe, and there are clues pointing in both directions. For instance, a 2015 study found *both* an anti-inflammatory effect *and* harm to white blood cells at the same low concentrations (see Elisia). So DMSO is a bit of a wildcard, and it’s quite amazing to me that so many people carelessly use such an exotic and aggressively artificial chemical — with dozens of industrial and laboratory applications — just because it has a reputation for being good for pain. DMSO2 is a closely related chemical, less potent/volatile, and so probably safer — but just as unproven and poorly understood. Warning: In rare cases, massage lotions may be “spiked” with DMSO or DMSO2 *without disclosure*. Can dimethyl sulfoxide “solvent” your pain problems? This complex industrial solvent is a little too biologically “interesting” for comfort |
new Jun 29, 24Jun '24 | 3,500 | |
Opioids for Chronic Aches & Pains+ The infamous opioids are drugs like codeine (found in small doses in Tylenol IIs and IIIs) and the more heroin derivatives and imitators like Oxycontin, Percocet, and Vicodin. They induce deep relaxation and euphoria and have the potential to make you not care about pain (disocciative euphoria). Unfortunately, their efficacy is surprisingly dubious. Some people are even genetically immune to them. They do not seem to work particularly well for chronic musculoskeletal pain (non-cancer pain), and may even backfire and cause pain (although this has yet to be proven). They probably aren’t even as powerful for acute pain as they are reputed to be. And, of course, they also have grim risks like life-altering addiction and death by overdose, which is shockingly common. The danger can’t be overstated: more ordinary Americans have started to die from opioid overdose than car accidents. The CDC declared in early 2016 that opioids should not be an option for chronic musculoskeletal pain: there’s too much danger, and too little evidence of benefit. On the other hand, not everyone gets addicted, many people get meaningful relief, and there are many nuanced medical reasons why responsible physicians still be judiciously prescribing opioids. However, in many places (most notably America), “opioid phobia” is now burning so hot that it’s becoming extremely difficult for doctors to do that. If you have a good relationship with a cautious doctor who respects the risks, it can be reasonable to consider a short term opioid experiment for a stubborn pain problem (the kind of pain this website focusses on). But the need for caution and compassionate medical collaboration is as high as it gets. The nuclear option: Oxycontin, codeine and other opioids for musculoskeletal problems like neck and back pain |
updated Jun 24, 24Jun '24 | 6,000 | |
You Might Just Be Weird+ Strange, wonderful, and problematic anatomical variations occur in humans all the time. The best anatomical diagrams depict average anatomy only, and sometimes they are even wrong about what’s average — as with the number of floating ribs (where three is actually just as common as the conventionally accepted two). “The word ‘normal’ is probably an inappropriate word to apply to the human body” (Dr. Ian Griffiths). The line between “normal variation” and “defect” is very blurry. But do anatomical variations ever cause trouble, like chronic pain? Oh, hell yes they do (again, floating ribs are a good example). Certainly not all, probably not most, but definitely some. We often make a fuss over the visible anatomical variations—too much of a fuss in many cases (“structuralism”) — while completely neglecting the possibility of invisible oddities that may be more important. Such cases often join the “X-files” of therapy, the unsolved clinical mysteries that every pro encounters. “For every visible, superficial oddity, there may be an invisible internal one… and only surgeons ever find out about them” (Dr. Sherwin Nuland). The clinical significance of normal — and not so normal — anatomical variations |
updated Jun 19, 24Jun '24 | 4,500 | |
Chronic Pain as a Conditioned Behaviour+Can chronic pain be a “learned response” (classical conditioning) to things that shouldn’t hurt, like Pavlov’s dogs salivating to the ring of a bell? It’s an interesting idea, with obviously optimistic implications, because what is learned might also be un-learned. If so, it’s a bit of a brain hack, a clever and surprising solution around one of the hardest problems there is. It’s a bit unlikely, but so interesting that it’s worth discussing and exploring. If pain can be learned, perhaps it can be unlearned | updated Jun 11, 24Jun '24 | 5,500 | |
Alternative Medicine’s Choice What should alternative medicine be the alternative to? The alternative to cold and impersonal medicine? Or the alternative to science and reason? | updated Jun 4, 24Jun '24 | 5,500 | |
The Trouble with Chairs+Inactivity and excessive sitting isn’t healthy, but probably not as bad as it’s cracked up to be, and has reassuringly little to do with back pain especially. The best chair for back pain is the most comfortable one. The science of being sedentary and how much it does (or doesn’t) affect your health and back pain | updated Jun 4, 24Jun '24 | 9,500 | |
Pseudo-Quackery in Physical Therapy+Pseudo-quackery is quackery that passes for good medicine despite strong evidence that it doesn’t work. Unfortunately, not all quackery is obvious — not even to skeptics. “Pseudo-quackery” appears to be mainstream, advanced, technological, “science-y,” or otherwise legit — quackery without any sign of being way out in left field. It has enough superficial plausibility to persist in the absence of evidence against it. This subtler type of snake oil is a more serious problem in musculoskeletal health care, because it hides right in the mainstream. For instance, it’s nearly synonymous with the early history of physical therapy, and remains alarmingly prevalent in that profession. So pseudo-quackery is extremely common, and generates more false hopes and wasted time, energy, money, and harm than more overt quackery, which is relatively marginalized. The large, dangerous grey zone between evidence-based care and overt quackery in rehab and pain treatments | updated Jun 1, 24Jun '24 | 5,000 | |
Whole Body Cryotherapy for Pain+Shivery showers, ice baths, and cold-water swimming have a long history with many faddish revivals, and are currently hotly touted as a recovery aid and wellness tonic, but evidence is underwhelming at best. This guide mostly throws a bucket of cold water on the main cryotherapy claims. The science of freezing your butt off to treat pain or enhance recovery from intense exercise | Apr 17, 24Apr '24 | 5,500 | |
Water Fever and the Fear of Chronic Dehydration Do we really need eight glasses of water per day? | Apr 15, 24Apr '24 | 5,500 | |
Achilles Tendinitis Treatment Science Evidence-based guidelines for the fastest possible recovery | Apr 14, 24Apr '24 | 7,500 | |
A Rational Guide to Fibromyalgia+ Fibromyalgia is an unexplained and mostly untreatable illness of chronic pain, fatigue, and mental fog affecting about 1–2% of the population. Some recover naturally. The label is often not used when it should be and also often used when it shouldn’t. Fibromyalgia is associated with (and may be related to) conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, mood disorders, inflammatory arthritis, and especially the pain of “trigger points” (sensitive patches of muscle). Its many non-specific symptoms are routinely confused with many more conditions. Controversy, stigma, quackery, and junky science swirl around fibromyalgia like a bad smell. No medical speciality specializes in it. Rheumatologists and neurologists often get “stuck” with fibromyalgia patients, and have no idea what to do with them. Alternative medicine has flooded the knowledge gap with many bogus theories and related cures, like excess phosphate, adrenal fatigue, or “bad energy.” Many pros still assume fibromyalgia is “all in your head” or a character weakness, but studies have shown that fibromyalgia does have a biological fingerprint. Fibromyalgia is a bigger medical puzzle than cancer, and there is no proven treatment. Regular moderate exercise seems to be helpful for some, but can backfire. Patients need to stay as healthy as possible otherwise, especially protecting sleep as much as practical, and avoiding drugs/alcohol/smoking. Vitamin D supplementation is a worthwhile experiment for many. No medications are known to be helpful. The science (and not the pseudoscience) of the mysterious disease of pain, exhaustion, and mental fog |
Mar 22, 24Mar '24 | 26,000 | |
The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain+ Myofascial trigger points — so-called “muscle knots” — are increasingly recognized as a factor in many of the world’s aches and pains. This book-length tutorial focuses on advanced troubleshooting for patients who have failed to get relief from basic tactics, but it’s also ideal for starting beginners on the right foot, and for pros who want to stay current and as science-based as possible. 183 sections inspired by the famous texts of Drs. Travell & Simons, but also much more recent science. An extremely detailed guide to the unfinished science of muscle pain, with reviews of every theory and treatment option |
Mar 4, 24Mar '24 | 210,000 | |
Painful Lessons What I’ve learned from twenty-five years of studying pain and injury | Mar 3, 24Mar '24 | 3,500 | |
Manual Therapy: What is it, and does it work?+ “Manual therapy” refers mainly to massage, spinal manipulation, and many other methods of treating common musculoskeletal problems and injuries with hands and/or tools, from Rolfing to acupuncture to ultrasound. It is the jewel in the crown of alternative medicine, exemplifying the best it has to offer: the time, compassion, and touch that medicine often neglects. It is mostly the domain of massage therapists, chiropractors, and (surgery) physical therapists, but also much smaller populations of osteopaths, acupuncturists, and a few doctors. Most manual therapy is time-consuming and therefore expensive. Unfortunately, manual therapy also demonstrates the worst of alternative medicine: it is a pseudoscientific dumpster fire. There only a few major, simplistic themes, despite the practically infinite variety of technique. It is mostly fuelled by faith that tissue can be fixed or improved by just the right kind of physical manipulation or force. Sometimes that force is intense, and so the no-pain-no-gain hubris of several methods involves some risks … which cannot be justified by evidence. What little good research exists shows modest medical benefits at best, and the handful of journals dedicated to manual therapy are disdained by the scientifically literate. And so manual therapy is largely based instead on authority, tradition, and whatever sells. The field has a hall of shame the size of Grand Central Station, exhibiting some of the nastiest snake oils in history (e.g. infant chiropractic), as well as the silliest (vitalism is so influential in the world of manual therapy that it cannot be dismissed as a fringe belief). Even its more mainstream methods are something of an embarrassment: physical therapists are notorious for quackery that passes for good medicine, including many manual and similar therapies (probably most notably dry needling). And yet! There probably is a signal somewhere in all that noise. Rational manual therapists can ethically offer more plausible techniques, minimize the risks and costs, and create pleasant sensory and social experiences that are both inherently valuable *and* probably have some complex systemic benefits — such as a proven power to ease anxiety/depression. The power of touch, compassion, and novel sensations to inspire, comfort, and reassure should not be underestimated. The science of hands-on treatments like massage and spinal manipulation to “fix” tissue |
Mar 1, 24Mar '24 | 3,250 | |
Reviews of Pain Professions An opinionated guide to the most popular sources of professional help for injuries and chronic pain | Mar 1, 24Mar '24 | 11,000 | |
A Historical Perspective On Aches ‘n’ Pains+ We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t fix most chronic pain. The science and treatment of pain was neglected for decades while medicine had bigger fish to fry, and it remains a backwater to this day, despite significant recent progress. The seemingly simpler “mechanical” problems of musculoskeletal health care have proven to be surprisingly weird and messy (but fascinating, at least). Even sports medicine has been strangely slow to build its evidence base, despite elite athletes being worth trillions of dollars to our economy. Clinically, the field is still dominated by obsolete conventional wisdom and the speculations of desperate patients and opportunistic cure purveyors. For every mainstream medical myth, there are three about aches and pains and injuries, and snake oil thrives. Ignorance is widespread thanks to professional pride and tribalism, ideological momentum, screwed up incentives, and poor critical thinking skills. But the worst single offender is probably the pernicious and nearly unanimous oversimplification of treating the body too much like a complex mechanical device (“structuralism”). And so people with severe unexplained body pain, or injuries that just won’t heal, bounce around the medical system like they are in a pinball machine, serially misdiagnosed and mistreated, often never finding a professional who recognizes the problem, or — having at least recognized it — has a clue what to do about it. Why is healthcare for chronic pain and injury so bad? |
Feb 28, 24Feb '24 | 4,000 | |
The Complete Guide to Chronic Tension Headaches+ Headaches are one of the top 10 most disabling conditions and about 50% of us get tension headaches. Migraines involve the brain and are usually worse (but not always), tend to throb only one side, and cause some stranger symptoms. There are many other types of headaches and a firm diagnosis is nearly impossible. Any unusually severe, persistent, sudden, or strange headache needs medical investigation. Tension headaches have dozens of possible causes, but are associated with stress, fatigue, and neck pain, and are probably mainly caused by pain spreading from sensitive structures in the neck, face, jaw, and scalp, especially the suboccipital muscle group. Self-massage there is the most neglected easy treatment option. Other promising treatments include relaxation, meditation, breathing exercise, insomnia treatment, and building neck strength. Many popular treatments are ineffective, most notably pain-killers, which can even backfire; hydration, postural correction, chiropractic adjustment are also over-rated. A detailed, science-based tour of stubborn headache diagnosis and treatment, for both patients and professionals |
Feb 26, 24Feb '24 | 57,000 | |
Massage Therapy Side Effects+ Massage therapy is quite safe, but nothing’s perfect. Strong, deep tissue massage causes the most trouble, of course. It may aggravate problems, instead of helping. Some chronic pain patients may be disastrously traumatized by intense massage (what I call a “sensory injury”). Occasionally it causes new physical injuries, usually just minor bruises and nerve lesions, but sometimes far worse: there’s a small but serious risk of spinal injury or stroke with any neck manipulation, and blood clots can be dangerously dislodged causing pulmonary embolism (a “stroke” in the lung). On the milder side, patients often feel sore and a bit icky after massage (post-massage soreness and malaise). Although often rationalized by massage therapists as a healing crisis or the effects of “detoxifying,” it’s probably a minor muscle crush injury (rhabdomyolysis). Athletic performance may be slightly impaired by pre-event massage — a minor consideration for most of us, but not for serious competitors. Finally, sometimes massage therapy is a costly distraction from more appropriate care (as with any alternative medicine). What could possibly go wrong with massage? The risks and side effects of massage therapy are usually mild, but “deep tissue” massage can cause trouble |
Feb 10, 24Feb '24 | 5,500 | |
Tissue Provocation Therapies in Musculoskeletal Medicine+ There are two “laws” of tissue adaptation, one each for hard and soft tissue. Wolff’s law states that bone will change and strengthen in response to loading. This was first noticed by Julius Wolff in the 19th Century, who got the naming rights. It was greatly refined in the mid 20th century by Dr. Harold Frost, an American surgeon who studied bone biology, and published scientific papers more often than I change my socks. The full details of how bone responds to stress are described in his Mechanostat model. The corollary in soft tissue is the obscure and much less developed Davis’ law. (No one even seems to know who Davis was.) The more general SAID principles states that the body adapts to "specific imposed demands": we tend to adapt or improve only in the very specific ways in which we are challenged. Although there’s no question soft tissue does adapt to stress, the responses of muscles, tendons, and ligaments are much more complex and less well understood. Many treatments are based on the idea of forcing adaptation or “toughening up” tissues by stressing tissues in a great variety of ways, which I call "provocation" therapies. It has always been a reasonable enough hypothesis that tissue can be provoked into healing, but the devil is in the details: what constitutes the “right” amount and kind of stress is difficult to know, and the results of such therapies have generally been highly inconsistent. Some popular methods and rehab strategies of this kind have been shown to be ineffective, and they can also be risky: scraping massage (Graston, Astym, gua sha), prolotherapy, and eccentric loading for tendinitis."; Can healing be forced? The laws of tissue adaptation & therapies like Prolotherapy & Graston Technique |
Feb 8, 24Feb '24 | 5,000 | |
Does Fascia Matter?+ Fascia is widely regarded as an exciting scientific frontier, with well-attended fascia conferences featuring gurus in the world of massage and manual therapy. The big idea is that fascia — tough sheets and webs of connective tissue wrapping almost all other anatomical structures, all the way down to the microscopic — can get tight and restrictive, and needs to be “released” by pulling on it artfully or technically. Unfortunately, although fascia science may be inherently interesting as biology, and fascial compartment syndrome is certainly a real and scary medical problem, no subtle property of fascia has yet been shown to be clinically relevant to anything. No fascial pathology seems to be a factor in any common painful problem, and no method of fascial manipulation is known to have any effect on fascia whatsoever, let alone “fix” it’s hypothetical problems. I have challenged fascia fans to cite clinically relevant fascia science, with no result for many, many years now. This article reviews several key candidates, such as well-known studies about fascia’s toughness, its contractility, and its role in back pain. None remotely confirm any clinical importance, and some actually undermine it. I also cover many other related subtopics, such the irrelevance of piezoelectricity, thixotropic effect, the popular “fuzz” theory of stiffness, and much more. A detailed critical analysis of the clinical relevance of fascia science and fascia properties |
Feb 2, 24Feb '24 | 31,000 | |
Does Posture Matter?+ Posture matters a little, but not a lot. It is not a major factor in any kind of pain. Its clinical importance is exaggerated to justify a great deal of well-intentioned but misguided therapy (particularly by massage therapists and chiropractors). There is no ideal posture, and the idea of poor posture as lazy or careless habitual body positioning that eventually causes strain, injury, and pain is mostly simplistic fear-mongering and the single best example of the rehab professon’s obsolete fascination with biomechanics, alignment, and symmetry (“structuralism”). Many habitual postures are either trivial, or the result of long-term adaptations to anatomical quirks, and it’s difficult and even unwise to try to change them — mostly a waste of time, but also potentially expensive and harmful. They are also often a response to lousy ergonomics (inefficient tool use) which causes postural stress, but this is also exaggerated (for instance, “text neck” is not a thing). Although many people are more vulnerable to physical stresses, including postural stress, the most relevant and fixable problem is probably the biological vulnerability, not the posture. Metabolic health is a much bigger factor in most kinds of chronic pain. Fit people should be able to easily tolerate mild to moderate postural stresses, and avoid more serious ones with sensible load management, ergonomic adjustments, and plenty of “movement snacks.” To whatever small degree that posture deserves some attention, I recommended trying to remove major systemic barriers to success (e.g. insomnia); visualization and role-playing; awareness reminders and aversion therapies; some props and tools (e.g. tape); and pursuing fitness and and more activity in general. While there should be a foundation of utilitarian exercise, make sure there’s also something you enjoy: fun and inspiration, not discipline! Yoga, for instance, is only a good exercise prescription if you like yoga. But beware of obsessing over posture, and especially steer clear of all “advanced” methods taught by posture gurus and “posturologists” — they are mostly completely speculative nonsense. Addressing alleged muscle imbalances with massage or stretching is futile (and stretching is generally overrated as a pillar of fitness). So is strengthening, but at least that has clear fitness side benefit, for which I highly recommend it… but don’t bother trying to "correct" regional weakness to improve posture and core strength. Yes to fitness! No to fitness optimized for posture correction. If your main issue is unexplained or stubborn aches and pains, working on your posture is mostly a wild goose chase. There’s almost no chance that posture is the problem in the first place, or that you can fix it in any case. A detailed guide to posture and postural correction strategies (especially why none of it matters very much) |
Jan 31, 24Jan '24 | 23,000 | |
Anxiety & Chronic Pain A self-help guide for people who worry and hurt | Jan 19, 24Jan '24 | 18,000 | |
Complete Guide to Plantar Fasciitis+ Plantar fasciitis is a stubborn pain in the arch of the foot. Yet scientists have proven that certain treatments are effective for most patients — so why don’t more professionals recommend them? Much of the science is new, and old myths die hard. This tutorial debunks the myths and reviews of all the common treatment options. Incredibly detailed, 64 sections in all, and thoroughly referenced. An extremely detailed guide to plantar fasciitis, especially every possible treatment option, and all supported by recent scientific research |
Jan 12, 24Jan '24 | 77,000 | |
Neuropathies Are Overdiagnosed Our cultural fear of neuropathy, and a story about nerve pain that wasn’t | Jan 3, 24Jan '24 | 2,500 | |
The Complete Guide to IT Band Syndrome+ ITBS is an infamously stubborn lateral knee pain common in runners. Therapy hasn’t been working? You’re not alone. This exhaustively researched tutorial shows that most medical “facts” about the condition are wrong — supported by 231 footnotes analyzing as much of the science as you can stand. Cures cannot be guaranteed, but this tutorial offers both patients and pros 29 detailed treatment options and more insights than you can find anywhere else. An extremely detailed guide to iliotibial band syndrome (runner’s knee), with detailed reviews of every treatment option |
Dec 22, 23Dec '23 | 92,000 | |
The Medical Blind Spot for Aches, Pains & Injuries+ Many doctors, especially general practitioners, lack the skills and knowledge to treat even common aches, pains, and injury problems, never mind the stubborn and puzzling cases. Some doctors are well aware of this, but many just have no idea, underestimate the complexity of pain care, and cannot even triage and refer appropriately. Even specialists tend to be too specialized, and many patients fall into the huge cracks between fields like rheumatology and neurology. Even pain specialists are often too specialized for many patients, their expertise invested in helping people with major and exotic disease pain — not relatively “minor” problems like back pain. Medical researchers have done many studies showing that most doctors jut do not know much about pain, and don’t heed expert recommendations. For instance, family doctors frequently ignore guidelines for the care of low back pain (Williams et al.). Freedman et al. wrote: “It is ... reasonable to conclude that medical school preparation in musculoskeletal medicine is inadequate.” In 2005, Matzkin et al. concluded that “training in musculoskeletal medicine is inadequate in both medical school and non-orthopaedic residency training programs.” In 2006, Stockard et al. reported that 82% of medical graduates “failed to demonstrate basic competency in musculoskeletal medicine.” Orthopedic surgery is notorious for pushing bogus procedures like Knee Debridement is a Completely Ineffective Procedure. MRI is overwhelmingly abused as “medical theatre.” fibromyalgia patients are still referred for mental health care in droves. And so on and on ever since: the basics and well-established guidelines and best practices are widely neglected. Most physicians are unqualified to care for many common pain and injury problems, especially the more stubborn and tricky ones |
Dec 2, 23Dec '23 | 1,300 | |
Vulnerability to Chronic Pain+ The specific cause of chronic pain are often less important than non-specific sensitivity to any pain. The biggest risk factors for pain chronicity are things like poor health, fitness, and socioeconomic status, inequality… and they overshadow common scapegoats like poor posture, spinal degeneration, or even repetitive strain injury. How can nothing in particular make us hurt? Because pain is weird, a generally oversensitive alarm system that can produce false alarms even at the best of times, and more of them when your system is under strain. So what are these non-specific vulnerabilities to chronic pain, specifically? Sleep deprivation is one of the most obvious examples: everything hurts more when you lose too much sleep. Other examples: smoking, too much booze, sedentariness, stress, and much more. And what can you do about this? “Easy”: just get healthier! With a variety of vulnerability reduction projects, AKA lifestyle medicine or wellness optimization. So not actually easy at all, but simple in principle. Getting more exercise and sleep are usually the lowest hanging fruit. Quitting bad habits like smoking, drinking, and junk food are harder but simple and very effective. In some cases, loneliness can be almost easy to fix (join a club). Where’s the science? Does this work? No one knows. It’s plausible and likely. But you really cannot waste your time trying to be a healthier, fitter person! Chronic pain often has more to do with general biological vulnerabilities than specific tissue problems |
Oct 30, 23Oct '23 | 7,500 | |
Marijuana for Pain+Marijuana is allegedly a medicine, widely believed to have many health benefits, but especially pain relief. As legalization spreads around the world like a wildfire, so does the hype, racing far ahead of the science — which is amazingly incomplete and extremely complex and contradictory. CBD for pain has barely been studied at all, and THC is probably more of a pain-coping drug than a pain-killing drug, due to its psychoactive effects. Despite its reputation for being completely safe, it’s not (nothing with any power can be): addiction and withdrawal, overdose, psychosis, and a bizarre vomitting syndrome are all legitimate concerns. The hype versus the science! What does the evidence actually show about cannabis and chronic pain? | Oct 28, 23Oct '23 | 7,000 | |
Can Massage Therapy Cause Nerve Damage? It is possible, but hard to do, rare, and the damage is usually minor | Sep 30, 23Sep '23 | 6,500 | |
Ten Trillion Cells Walked Into a Bar A humourous and unusual perspective on how, exactly, a person is even able to stand up, let alone walk into a bar | Sep 18, 23Sep '23 | 4,500 | |
Trigger Point Doubts+ People often experience acutely sensitive, aching spots in their muscle tissue that we call “muscle knots.” They can be surprisingly severe, and massaging them often seems to help quite a bit. What’s going on? The dominant theory is that a trigger point is a patch of tightly contracted muscle, an isolated spasm affecting just a small patch of muscle tissue. Unfortunately, after a few decades it’s still just a theory, and trigger point science is a bit half-baked and somewhat controversial. It’s not even clear that there is really a problem in the meat at all; it could be a sensory “disturbance,” for instance. Meanwhile, people keep hurting, and there is little doubt that there is an important, almost epidemic phenomenon here in need of explaining and treating. Massage — especially self-massage — remains a safe, cheap way of trying to deal with it, and there is some evidence that it can provide some meaningful relief (e.g. Furlan 2008 is probably the best example). That’s why I have a large tutorial devoted to how to self-treat “trigger points” — whatever they really are. But it’s important to keep in mind that they are not well understood. Do muscle knots exist? Exploring controversies about the existence and nature of so-called “trigger points” and myofascial pain syndrome |
Sep 2, 23Sep '23 | 16,000 | |
A Deep Dive into Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness+ Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), AKA “muscle fever,” is the muscle pain and weakness that starts up to a day after unfamiliar exercise, peaking up to two days later. The strongest trigger is a lot of eccentric contraction (e.g. quadriceps while descending). DOMS is much weaker after the next workout, but the first bout can be so fierce that people avoid starting valuable exercise programs, especially strength training. It’s worse for some people due to genetic factors and other biological stresses (especially sleep trouble). Medical science can’t explain DOMS, let alone treat it. Many athletes believe that massage helps, but that’s not what the evidence shows. And many take ibuprofen as prevention, but that doesn’t work either. Drugs will only take the edge off the pain. The only promising treatments are heat and Indian food (curcumin), but not confirmed. Excessive DOMS may also be a symptom of other health problems, some of which can be treated, most notably vitamin D deficiency and insomnia. The idea that DOMS is caused by micro-trauma isn't as clearly established as you might think, probably because the line between physical and metabolic stress gets blurry. DOMS may be mild form of “rhabdomyolysis,” which is caused by mucle proteins spilling into the blood. There is no clear link between DOMS and any one specific biological marker (and definitely not lactic acid). There are even clues that DOMS is neurological. It is not straightforwardly inflammatory: evidence suggests that inflammation is what reduces DOMS pain as you continue to exercise. Mysterious indeed! The biology & treatment of “muscle fever,” the deep muscle soreness that surges 24-48 hours after an unfamiliar workout intensity |
Aug 30, 23Aug '23 | 17,000 | |
Quackery Red Flags+When choosing treatments, please be wary of the 3 D’s: treatments that may be dangerous, dubious, and distracting (costly or time-consuming). No pain treatment is perfect, but does it at least make sense? Is it safe? Cheap? Reasonably convenient? Beware the 3 D’s of quackery: Dubious, Dangerous and Distracting treatments for aches and pains (or anything else) | Aug 4, 23Aug '23 | 2,200 | |
The Double-Edged Sword of Imaging to Diagnose Pain When and why to get scanned when you’re trying to figure out why something just keeps hurting | Jun 13, 23Jun '23 | 2,750 | |
Speculation-Based Medicine Alternative medicine prioritize experience and speculation over evidence (and then tends to ignore the evidence when it finally arrives) | Jun 13, 23Jun '23 | 900 | |
Medical Errors in Perspective+ Alternative medicine practitioners often point accusingly to medical error rates with the implication that their services are much safer. That’s probably true, in the sense that walking is much safer than driving. But if your profession had to treat huge numbers of people with dire injuries and illnesses, it would also have scary error rates. Bad things do happen in hospitals, and stats about iatrogenic (doctor-generated) medical errors can seem alarming. However, to simply state that medicine kills and hurts people is unethical fear-mongering. Cars kill and hurt people too, and for pretty much the same reason: sure it’s risky, but the benefits are worth the risk, and huge numbers of people are willing to take that chance. Medical systems deal with vastly greater numbers of much more serious cases than any chiropractor or naturopath, and many of them are no-win, rarely-win, or sometimes-lose situations with the highest stakes, terrible suffering and death. We should be cautious about criticizing that from the outside. Try working in a hospital for a while, try to be perfect, try to never have anything go wrong that matters! Medical error rates have been exaggerated by a popular myth and should not be used to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt |
Jun 12, 23Jun '23 | 1,800 | |
Spinal Fracture Bracing and Fixation My wife’s terrible accident, and a whirlwind tour of the science and biomechanics of her spine brace | Jun 11, 23Jun '23 | 2,500 | |
We Are Full of Critters The human body is a colony of ten trillion co-operating cells | Jun 11, 23Jun '23 | 1,500 | |
Deep Cervical Flexor Training for Neck Pain “Core” strengthening for the neck is even less evidence-based than core-strengthening for back pain | Jun 10, 23Jun '23 | 1,200 | |
Micro Muscles and the Dance of the Sarcomeres A mental picture of muscle knot physiology helps to explain four familiar features of muscle pain | Jun 10, 23Jun '23 | 4,000 | |
How Many Muscles Are In the Human Body? A slightly tongue-in-cheek tally of our many muscles | Jun 10, 23Jun '23 | 1,800 | |
Confirmation Bias+ Confirmation bias explains a lot about human nature. Most people know it best in the form of “selective perception” or “selective memory” — hearing, seeing, and remembering only what you want to hear, see, and remember (see also “pareidolia”). Confirmation bias is a whole lot more: a dazzling array of devious and largely unconscious mental tactics and thinking glitches that lead people to confirm their beliefs and pet theories. We not only tend to ignore, deny and overlook anything that contradicts our point of view, but we also invariably notice, inflate and or even fabricate anything that supports it. Confirmation bias is one of the main reasons that The Truth is so slippery, and both amateurs and experts alike are prone to significant thinking errors. There are people who consider it part of their job description to eliminate confirmation bias from their thinking — the best scientists and journalists, for instance — but it’s really difficult. Everyone has confirmation bias: it’s just how minds (don’t) work! Confirmation bias is the human habit of twisting our perceptions and thoughts to confirm what we want to believe |
Jun 8, 23Jun '23 | 1,400 | |
Reassurance for Massage Therapists+ There are some major issues with massage therapy that many massage therapists are unaware of: extensive pseudoscientific nonsense and amateurism in the profession. PainScience.com shines a bright light on those issues, and that has crushed the spirits of some massage therapists — even the most progressive and science-respecting ones. What really tugs at my heart strings is that they aren’t necessarily even disagreeing about the problems in the profession, but just feeling awful about agreeing with me. Ouch! This article tries to do some damage control, and lift those spirits back up. Here are some of the key points of reassurance for massage therapists:
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Jun 3, 23Jun '23 | 3,250 | |
Vitamin D for Pain+ Walk down a busy street in Canada, Russia, or the UK — high-latitude countries — and you’ll pass someone with vitamin D deficiency every few seconds. D deficiency is certainly real and common (but probably not as extreme as some experts believe). But how much does it matter? There’s a lot of hype about vitamin D, but most of the controversy is about healthy patients. People with actual health problems are a different kettle of fish, and chronic pain specifically is a particularly special case. Vitamin D deficiency is suspiciously common in people with chronic pain, maybe because it actually causes it, or at least makes it worse. Symptoms include muscle and bone aching, fatigue and weakness, sensitization, and depression. Chronic pain is usually caused by a sinister stew of many factors that eat away at people for many years. Trying to solve it by fixing one thing, like vitamin D deficiency, is like trying to fix a broken engine with just one tool. But it might help, and the only thing worse than chronic pain with six causes is … seven causes. There’s a good case to be made for presumptive treatment of vitamin D deficiency. A lot of healthy people take this stuff “just in case”; it’s hardly radical for pain patients to give it a shot. Supplements and sunshine should be your main sources of vitamin D. Why not just eat a D-rich diet? Because you’d have to eat a LOT of fish. It’s hard to get a meaningful amount of vitamin D from food. Please do not take “mega” doses of vitamin D. There’s a large margin of safety with vitamin D, but megadosing is just silly (and dangerous). Is it safe and reasonable for chronic pain patients to take higher doses of Vitamin D? And just how high is safe? |
May 30, 23May '23 | 6,000 | |
Mind Over Pain+ Modern pain science shows that pain is a volatile, complex sensation that is often tuned by the brain. It functions as an overprotective warning system. Pain is completely brain-generated, and signals from damaged tissues are only one factor of many that the brain uses to create the experience of pain. Does this mean that we can think pain away? Probably not, because conscious minds are not the boss of our much busier brains. However, we do have some “neurological leverage” of great value — we can influence pain, indirectly, if we understand it. This overlaps with lifestyle medicine, but it’s distinct from it: it’s about tinkering with pain perception itself. The challenge is to convince our brains that there’s no need for an alarm. Just explaining pain itself to patients may reassure them that the danger implied by pain — especially chronic pain — is often greatly exaggerated. But explaining pain is hard and often backfires, treating patients like they just need a better “attitude” about their pain. Fortunately, there are many rational self-help options to pursue: education, rejecting “scary” diagnostic theories, treating anxiety and reducing sources of stress, creating sensory pleasures, seeking helpful social contexts, limiting “drama” and pain talk, positive movement, and many more. None of these tactics are easy or proven paths to pain relief, but they all have potential, and are grounded in modern pain science. Pain can be profoundly warped by the brain, but does that mean we can think the pain away? |
May 26, 23May '23 | 22,000 | |
Neurodynamic Stretching Stretching and stimulating nerves to treat neuropathy… hopefully | May 22, 23May '23 | 3,750 | |
IT Band Pain is Knee Pain, Not Hip Pain Pain in the hip and thigh is something else, I promise | May 20, 23May '23 | 2,400 | |
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Chronic Pain The science of CBT, ACT, and other mainstream psychotherapies for chronic pain | May 19, 23May '23 | 4,750 | |
Chronic Low Back Pain Is Not So Chronic The prognosis for chronic low back pain is better than you think | Apr 28, 23Apr '23 | 3,500 | |
Diagnosing Runner’s Knee+There are two types of runners knee, mainly distinguished by location: pain on the SIDE of the knee (IT band) versus pain on the FRONT of the knee (patellofemoral), but there are several other key differences. It usually starts with lateral knee pain during and after runs, but there are two major types | Apr 22, 23Apr '23 | 2,400 | |
Ozone Therapy for Pain A critical analysis of using trioxide to treat back pain, fibromyalgia, and arthritis | Apr 18, 23Apr '23 | 6,500 | |
The Art of Bioenergetic Breathing A potent tool for personal growth and transformation by breathing quickly and deeply | Mar 18, 23Mar '23 | 3,250 | |
Mobilize! Dynamic joint mobility drills are an alternative to stretching, a way to “massage with movement” | Mar 7, 23Mar '23 | 11,000 | |
Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain (So Low That It’s Not In the Back) Perfect Spot No. 12, a common (almost universal) trigger point in the superolateral origin of the gluteus maximus muscle | Mar 6, 23Mar '23 | 3,000 | |
Icing for Injuries, Tendinitis, and Inflammation Become a cryotherapy master | Feb 14, 23Feb '23 | 8,000 | |
The Tyranny of Yoga and Meditation Do you really need to try them? How much do they matter for recovery from conditions like low back pain? | Feb 10, 23Feb '23 | 4,750 | |
Massage Therapy for Tension Headaches Perfect Spot No. 1, in the suboccipital muscles of the neck, under the back of the skull. | Feb 7, 23Feb '23 | 2,750 | |
Does Pandiculation “Reset” Muscle Tone? It might, but it’s probably no more profound than resetting your thirst with a glass of water | Jan 28, 23Jan '23 | 3,000 | |
The 3 Basic Types of Pain+ There are two main classifications of pain: the common sensical sort that arises from damaged tissue (nociceptive pain), and the more exotic kind that comes from damage to the system that reports and interprets damage, the nervous system (neuropathic pain). This is the difference between engine trouble and trouble with that light on your dashboard that claims there’s engine trouble. Oddly, there is still no clear, official “other” category for the pain of conditions like fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome, which see to involve dysfunction of the nervous system, as opposed to damage; historical names like functional pain have many problems, and new names like nociplastic (probably the most popular), algopathic, or just primary pain are on the table. Nociception and pain are not equivalent and there are no “pain fibres,” just nerves that send data to the brain for consideration. All pain is technically a brain-generated experience. However, the illusion that pain is “in” our body is meaningful and functional. Pain can also be classified as somatic (skin, muscle, bones, joints) and visceral (organs). Nociceptive, neuropathic, and “other” (and then some more) |
Jan 23, 23Jan '23 | 6,000 | |
When to Worry About Low Back Pain+ The pain of back pain usually makes it seem worse than it is. The most worrisome kinds of back pain rarely involve severe pain, and many common problems (like slipped discs) are mostly much less serious than people fear. Only about 1% of back pain is ominous, and even then it’s often still treatable. Most of that 1% is cancer, autoimmune disease, and spinal cord damage. Don’t medically investigate back pain until it’s met at least three criteria: (1) it’s been bothering you for more than about 6 weeks; (2) it’s severe and/or not improving, or actually getting worse; and (3) there’s at least one other “red flag”: age over 55 or under 20, painful to light tapping, fever/malaise, weight loss, slow urination, incontinence, groin numbness, a dragging toe, or symptoms in both legs like numbness and/or tingling and/or weakness. Note that signs of arthritis are not red flags. Red flags do not confirm that something horrible is going on, just that it’s time to talk to a doctor. And the absence of red flags is not remotely a guarantee that you’re in the clear — but it’s a good start. And when not to! What’s bark and what’s bite? Checklists and red flags for the scary causes of back pain |
Oct 22, 22Oct '22 | 5,500 | |
Vibration Therapies, from Massage Guns to Jacuzzis What are the medical benefits of vibrating massage and other kinds of tissue jiggling? | Sep 19, 22Sep '22 | 5,000 | |
Should You Get A Lube Job for Your Arthritic Knee? Reviewing the science of injecting artificial synovial fluid, especially for patellofemoral pain | Aug 19, 22Aug '22 | 2,100 | |
13 Kinds of Bogus Citations Classic ways to self-servingly screw up references to science, like “the sneaky reach” or “the uncheckable” | Aug 17, 22Aug '22 | 6,000 | |
Does Spinal Manipulation Work?+ The idea of “adjusting” the spine refers to many different manual therapies that wiggle, pop, and otherwise manipulate spinal joints. The umbrella term for these treatments is “spinal manipulative therapy” (SMT). Expert opinions on SMT range widely, with some experts expressing strong concern and skepticism. Its provenance in chiropractic subluxation theory is dubious, its benefits are minor at best, and yet there are rare-but-serious risks, even including paralysis and death in the case of SMT for the joints of the neck. Despite all the controversy, there has never been much high quality scientific research to determine whether or not SMT is effective (or safe). Major science reviews have either been thoroughly discouraging or barely encouraging. SMT can’t possibly be very efficacious on average. And yet spinal joint popping in particular is something that people crave, and most clinicians believe that some forms of SMT can be helpful to some of their patients, some of the time. There seems to be almost no doubt that there is something of therapeutic interest going on in SMT, for at least some patients. Spinal manipulation, adjustment, and popping of the spinal joints and the subluxation theory of disease, back pain and neck pain |
Aug 13, 22Aug '22 | 17,000 | |
The Role of Eccentric Contractions in Rehab+An eccentric or braking contraction is an interesting but routine type of muscular contraction that seems like a paradox: the muscle is contracting even as it is lengthening! It is the yang to the yin of concentric contraction. Eccentric contraction is a bit physiologically mysterious, and is known to be harder on muscle, causing more soreness (quadriceps after hiking down a mountain is the classic example). It may be a good stimulus for adaptation in tendon as well as muscle. However, just because it is a little harder on muscle does not make it ‘better exercise’ or a reason to run downhill rather than up. A weird bit of muscle physiology, and what it has to do with recovery from injury | Aug 13, 22Aug '22 | 3,000 | |
Does Massage Therapy Work?+ Therapeutic massage is expensive but popular and pleasant, with obvious subjective value, and proven benefit for anxiety and depression … but no other clear biological or medical effects. Most notably, the evidence that massage can help back and neck pain is sketchy, and there is no reason to believe that massage can help much with any other common musculoskeletal pain problem. Training and certification standards for massage therapists are all over the map, and most practitioners have barely scratched the surface of musculoskeletal medicine. The profession is rife with pseudoscience like crank theories about the causes of pain, the myth that massage detoxifies, or that painfully “deep tissue” massage is needed to “release” tissues (which is stressful or even harmful for many patients). And yet some medical benefits are plausible despite the lack of evidence. For instance, many apparently successful treatments may be due to the effects of pressure on “muscle knots,” which are a likely factor in many common pain problems, but poorly understood (and difficult to treat). And regardless, the effects on mood and mental health are so profound that patients can’t really lose — it’s a valuable service whether it “works” for pain or not. A review of the science of massage therapy … such as it is |
Aug 10, 22Aug '22 | 23,000 | |
Trigger Points on Trial A summary of the kerfuffle over Quintner et al., a key 2014 scientific paper criticizing the conventional wisdom about trigger points and myofascial pain syndrome | Aug 5, 22Aug '22 | 5,500 | |
Homeopathy Schmomeopathy+ Homeopathy is a 200-year-old medical philosophy that has been thoroughly debunked, and survives today thanks to wishful thinking, ignorance, and because it is too useless to be very dangerous. It is the flagship in the alternative medicine fleet: the most profitable, absurd, and snakey of all snake oils. Most people have no idea just how strange homeopathy is. The deal-breaker for many consumers is the discovery that it’s not just an “herbal” or “natural” remedy, but a “magical” one, based on a principle that reeks of flaky physics and old-timey snake oil flamboyance—much farther out in left field than herbs. Some people, of course, are quite happy citing quantum physics to explain alternative medicine, but you really have to be a card-carrying new age sort to go there. For most people, that crosses a line. But they have to find out first! Fortunately, doctors, scientists and skeptics are unanimously and harshly critical of homeopathy, and have published many good quality critical reviews. For instance, see my own article about homeopathic arnica — the most popular of all homeopathic products, intended to treat inflammatory pain. Homeopathy is not a natural or herbal remedy: it’s a magical idea with no possible basis in reality |
Jul 21, 22Jul '22 | 1,600 | |
Electromagnetic Sensitivity Absurdity+ Electrosensitivity is an alleged allergy to electromagnetic fields and radiation. It is the basis for paranoia particularly about the health effects of Wi-Fi networks, power lines, and cell phones — fears that top the charts of human irrationality. There’s little doubt that the afflicted are suffering from something, but it is either an unrelated medical condition and/or psychosomatic. Electrosensitivity has been thoroughly debunked. Unsurprisingly, many people who believe they can heal with life energy — reiki, acupuncture, and so on — are also active spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about artificial energy. No one with an actual energy allergy would last a day anywhere in the modern world. It would be an electrosensitive holocaust. They’d vanish in a poof of oversensitive smoke, moths flying into a bonfire. There is a closely related fear of EMF causing cancer, especially brain cancer. This isn’t as obviously irrational, but also extremely overblown — epidemiological data clearly shows that the risk is either nil or less than other risks we accept without drama. Chronic pain is sometimes blamed on electrosensitivity — an imaginary, debunked allergy to energy |
Jul 8, 22Jul '22 | 2,000 | |
The Complete Guide to Muscle Strains+ Got a muscle strain? Maybe … and maybe not. Probably 75% of so-called muscle strains are actually something else. Doctors routinely diagnose muscle strain incorrectly. The muscle strain tutorial is guaranteed to sort it out … and it is just about only the source of information that does. Muscle strain (pulled muscle) and muscle pain explained and discussed in great detail, plus reviews of every imaginable treatment option, with lots of referencing |
Jun 15, 22Jun '22 | 36,000 | |
Microbreaking+Microbreaks are regular, small breaks from being stuck in one position at work. It’s a survival strategy for chair-bound office workers, based on the (debatable) idea that sitting too much is Bad For You. It probably isn’t all that bad, but there are still good reasons to microbreak. Lots of little breaks may help compensate for too much time spent in chairs | Jun 2, 22Jun '22 | 4,000 | |
Your Back Is Not Out of Alignment+ “Structuralism” is the excessive focus on physical abnormalities in musculoskeletal medicine, things like tilted pelvises, short legs, abnormal spinal curvatures, or misaligned anything. These “biomechanical bogeymen” are the source of much therapeutic barking up the wrong tree. Although some factors like these do sometimes matter, they are collectively much less important than most people believe, and they tend to overshadow many other important biological and neurological considerations. The paradigm of structuralism has dominated musculoskeletal medicine for decades, but since the early 2000s it has been challenged by many medical researchers and experts, and many key scientific studies over the years have undermined major structuralist assumptions, like Finan’s finding that knee pain correlates more with pain sensitivity than arthritis; Grundy’s conclusion in Lancet that short leg length differences don’t correlate with back pain; or Grob’s findings that abnormal neck curvatures do not predict neck pain; or Moseley’s finding that a placebo for knee osteoarthritis is just as good as real surgery; or numerous MRI studies showing terrible correlation between structural problems and back pain (see Boden, Jensen, Weishaupt, Stadnik, Borenstein); or the astonishing finding by Haig that even narrowing of the spinal canal does not necessarily cause stenotic back pain; or the clear evidence that even dislocation of the upper cervical spine is often asymptomatic (Swinkels); and so on (and on and on). Structuralism is a simplistic old paradigm that needs to be replaced with more nuanced model of what causes and complicates aches, pains, and injuries. Debunking the obsession with alignment, posture, and other biomechanical bogeymen as major causes of pain |
May 30, 22May '22 | 21,000 | |
Stuck in My Throat+ This article explores the phenomenon of globus through the story of an actual case that was both severe and prolongued, but also eventually resolved. Globus pharyngeus is the sensation of a lump in the throat in the absence of any apparent physical obstruction in the throat, often considered psychosomatic. It’s common and may just be a minor sensory anomaly, like tinnitus. For a sensory phantom, globus can be a serious bully, interfering with swallowing and even breathing at worst, and causing severe anxiety about the possibility of scary causes like cancer. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to confidently rule out a medical cause in the short term. Globus is “all in your head” unless it isn’t. Unfortunately, the diagnostic challenge of is immense. Many subtle or obscure problems can be at the root of it, but some globus sufferers eventually get answers and relief from the discovery of causes like tonsil stones, acid reflux, minor injuries to pharyngeal stuctures, Eagle syndrome, cysts and cervical osteophytes, and other oddball anatomical abnormalities, mostly minor — just anything that irritates the throat. A “globus pharyngeus” nightmare, with a side of science |
May 10, 22May '22 | 9,000 | |
The Science of Pain-Killers A user’s guide to over-the-counter analgesics like acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and more | Mar 30, 22Mar '22 | 3,750 | |
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response That nice, weird tingly head feeling (and its possible relevance to healthcare and treating pain, especially with massage) | Mar 12, 22Mar '22 | 2,300 | |
Don’t Worry About Lifting Technique The importance of “lift with your legs, not your back” to prevent back pain and injury has been exaggerated | Mar 12, 22Mar '22 | 4,250 | |
Modality Empires+ “Modality empire” is my own term for an ego-driven proprietary method or mode of manual therapy — a sub-discipline — championed and promoted by a single charismatic entrepreneur. Most of the “emperors” have healer syndrome, lack humility, make big promises, and make their money from unusually expensive therapy, workshops and books. Professionals are sold on the opportunity to purchase credibility in the form of increasing “levels” of certification, but the quality of these certifications is completely unregulated and often dubious. A modality empire is as much a business model as a method of helping people, and many are quite unoriginal, just branding old ideas for a new generation of workshop consumers. Obviously there is a lot of overlap between modality empires and quackery, but (just as obviously) they aren’t all bad. The trouble with the toxic tradition of ego-driven, trademarked treatment methods in massage therapy, chiropractic, and physiotherapy |
Mar 5, 22Mar '22 | 3,250 | |
Use the Force! The myth of healing energy in massage and bodywork+ Therapeutic touch (TT) is hands-off aura massage, actual touch not included, and it is the most common form of energy or vitalistic medicine in North America. Most practitioners are massage therapists and, oddly, nurses. Many years ago I believed in it, but eventually I decided it was based only on wishful thinking, laughably naive references to quantum physics, and wide-eyed exaggeration of ordinary social interaction effects. Auras do not exist and cannot be felt, let alone manipulated therapeutically. Just as dousers and psychics have never passed a controlled test, TT practitioners cannot detect a person by feeling their aura, which makes them look ridiculous. It is peculiar and pleasant to have someone wave their hands all around you with friendly intentions, but those effects are minor and fleeting and it doesn’t matter what specifically the therapist does, because it’s the interaction that is the active ingredient — a placebo, in short. And placebo is nowhere near as “powerful” as people believe, and there are all kinds of ethical and practical problems with cluttering up the interaction with magical interpretations of what’s going on. Reiki, therapeutic touch, and other “energy medicine” methods are culturally rich but scientifically bankrupt |
Mar 4, 22Mar '22 | 4,000 | |
Shin Splints Treatment, The Complete Guide+ Do you know why your shins hurt? Shin splints are often not what they seem. With several possible underlying problems, patients often end up barking up the wrong tree. There are four very different types of shin pain. This tutorial breaks it down for you and goes through all the treatment options and recent science. About 20 times more information about shin splints in one place than you can get anywhere else. An extremely detailed guide to all types of shin splints for both patients and professionals, including thorough reviews of every possible treatment option, and all about the nature of the beast |
Feb 12, 22Feb '22 | 46,000 | |
The Tibiofibular Joint and Knee Pain A neglected joint in the diagnosis of knee pain (and near-knee pain) | Feb 11, 22Feb '22 | 1,100 | |
Does Arnica Gel Work for Pain?+ Homeopathic (diluted) herbal ointments featuring Arnica are supposedly good medicine for muscle pain, joint pain, sports injuries and bruises, but their effectiveness has been questioned by many experts. Known to most customers as “herbal” cream, most contain less than 10 micrograms of actual arnica per dose—much less that what’s needed for most substances to be considered a chemically active ingredient. Homeopathy is based on a fanciful interpretation of physics that involves ingredients having medicinal effects even after being diluted to the point of literally removing them—no detectable trace of them. Some of the herbal ingredients are less diluted and may be chemically active and more useful. A few tests of homeopathic pain creams—diluted to varying degrees—have been slightly encouraging, but only the poorer quality ones. In all good quality, modern scientific trials so far, they have performed no better than placebo. It’s still possible that a benefit might be proven, but unlikely. A detailed review of popular homeopathic (diluted) herbal creams and gels like Traumeel, used for muscle pain, joint pain, sports injuries, bruising, and post-surgical inflammation |
Jan 27, 22Jan '22 | 11,000 | |
Counterstimulation, Counterirritation, and Gate Control Minor but reliable, counterstimulation is the most basic pain-killing mechanisms in biology… and maybe there’s a fancier version that’s more useful | Jan 25, 22Jan '22 | 2,750 | |
Does Acupuncture Work for Pain?+ Acupuncture is the poster child of alternative medicine: charismatically exotic but less absurd than homeopathy, and heavily researched, people assume there “must be something to it,” including many skeptics until surprisingly recently. But acupuncture gets its support only from junky science, while all the good tests show that it’s no better than a placebo, for pain or anything else. This has been conceded even by many acupuncture researchers (although they bizarrely try to spin it as good news). Even NCCIH admits that acupuncture “works no better than a sham treatment at easing symptoms like pain and fatigue.” We shouldn’t be surprised: acupuncture’s popularity comes from easily debunked myths and propaganda, and it’s based on “vitalism,” a naive belief in an undetectable energy system in biology (like the Force, from Star Wars). It is not based on ancient Chinese wisdom, but a surprisingly modern invention (not that Chinese medicine was never “wise” to begin with: it’s a patchwork of superstition, habit, and guess work). Acupuncture is not and never has been used for anaesthesia (journalist James Reston did not, by his own account, contrary to legend); its use for that purpose was grossly exaggerated for political reasons during the Cultural Revolution. Finally, acupuncture isn’t even safe: aseptic technique (disinfectant, gloves) is often poor, and infections can and do happen. Acupuncture’s glory days are over. It is supported only by ideologues and the uninformed. More study is not needed. A review of modern acupuncture evidence and myths, focused on treatment of back pain & other common chronic pains |
Jan 15, 22Jan '22 | 11,000 | |
The Complete Guide to Neck Pain & Cricks+ Who hasn’t had a crick in the neck? This tutorial isn’t the last word on this surprisingly complex subject, but it is a detailed, sensible and scientific survey of what makes a neck crick tick — and your treatment options. Ideal for any frustrated patient with a jammed cervical spine, it’s also helpful for many a therapist not really sure how to treat this quirky phenomenon. An extremely detailed guide to chronic neck pain and the disturbing sensation of a “crick” |
Jan 13, 22Jan '22 | 112,500 | |
Popular but Weird & Dangerous Cures+ The colorful history of medicine and quackery is overflowing with people who “swore by” treatments that were bizarre and dangerous. Bloodletting was popular almost until the 20th century, despite being relentlessly harmful. Some of the most lethal “cures” in history were inspired by the discovery of radiation. People happily drank metals like mercury and silver. Even drinking urine had near fad status for a while! They tried to purge disease with sulfuric acid, and stimulate their vitality (and virility) with powerful electric shocks. Women were sold Lysol as a douche … and women actually went along with it for a while. Voluntary lobotomy may be the craziest of them all: it was a popular treatment for all kinds of psychiatric disorders, and at least fifty thousand people volunteered to have their brains lanced. All of these terrible treatments, and many more obscure examples, had many fans and enthusiastic testimonials. People paid for them, believed in them, loved them, swore by them — that is how misleading testimonials can be. People believe what they want to believe. The most dangerous, strange, and yet popular snake oils and “treatments” in history (and why anecdotes and testimonials cannot be trusted) |
Dec 27, 21Dec '21 | 2,200 | |
Does Epsom Salt Work?+ Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) in your bath is cheap and harmless and it makes the water feel “silkier,” but it probably doesn’t do anything else you hope it’s doing. Contrary to popular belief, it probably has no significant benefits for most common kinds of aches and pains. Most theories you hear about how Epsom salt baths work are oversimplified and meaningless. For instance, nearly everyone says it is absorbed by osmosis, which is very wrong; and there’s also no way it is “detoxifying” in any sense. Oral and nutritional magnesium supplementation may be helpful for some types of chronic pain for some people with magnesium deficiency, but digesting it probably works much better than trying to soak in it. Even topical delivery via creams is scientifically controversial, but absorption from baths is virtually unstudied: it may not work in a bath at all, or only modestly and erratically. The soothing heat of a nice bath is probably more therapeutic than whatever magnesium might be absorbed. Bathing in a magnesium sulfate solution also has no other known medical benefits other than possibly treating skin infections. The case for the healing powers of Epsom salt is mostly made by people selling the stuff, plus a few biologically illiterate alternative medicine practitioners keen on reinforcing their brand by prescribing “natural” remedies. If relatively dilute home salt baths were actually medicinal, then far more concentrated sources like The Dead Sea would have clear health effects, which they definitely do not. The science and mythology of Epsom salt bathing for recovery from muscle pain, soreness, or injury |
Dec 25, 21Dec '21 | 22,000 | |
Heat for Pain and Rehab+ Heat therapy is relaxing and a mild pain reliever, safer than any pain-killing drug and possibly as effective in some cases. Although far from proven or miraculous, it can probably take the edge off several kinds of pain, mostly duller and persistent pains associated with stiffness, cramping, and neuropathic sensitivity. It probably works simply because it’s comforting (which is applied neurology, more like triggering a reflex than a psychological effect). But heat will worsen some conditions much worse: please do not use heat on obviously injured or infected tissue (puffy, red, and/or hot). The difference between a minor injury and a bad “muscle knot” can be subtle, but heat is bad for one and nice for the other. Back pain is often ambiguous in this way! Experiment cautiously. Tiger Balm and similar products are “spicy,” not warm, and are only mildly useful (via a different mechanism, neurological “distraction”). A detailed guide to using heat as therapy for acute and chronic pain and recovery from injury |
Dec 16, 21Dec '21 | 14,000 | |
Voltaren Gel: Does It Work?+ Voltaren® Gel (topical diclofenac) is a particularly safe and useful medicine. It’s an anti-inflammatory cream, so it can be applied only where you need it, instead of soaking your entire system with a medication, avoiding or dramatically reducing common side effects like indigestion, as well as some serious safety concerns associated with oral diclofenac. In the US, this drug is FDA-approved to treat osteoarthritis in “joints amenable to topical treatment, such as the knees and those of the hands,” but it probably also works for some other painful problems, such as some repetitive strain injuries and back pain. The evidence shows that it “provides clinically meaningful analgesia.” So this product actually works and gets a pass from skeptics and critics — a rare thing in the world of pain treatments! Other topical analgesics are a mixed bag. The salicylates are likely effective but have more safety concerns (salicylate poisoning isn’t rare). The spicy-hot creams (Tiger Balm etc) won’t work miracles but may have some surprising benefits. Arnica creams are largely useless, especially the homeopathic preparations. The science of the topical pain-killers, which can be effective without dosing your entire system |
Dec 3, 21Dec '21 | 6,000 | |
The Role of “Spasm” in Frozen Shoulder+ There may be two kinds of “frozen” shoulder: mostly invincible contracture and more plastic functional inhibition of shoulder mobility. I make the case for this phenomenon in detail in my frozen shoulder book. This excerpt zooms in on how you might be able to tell these two types apart. The “freezing” of frozen shoulder is mainly caused by a contracture of the capsule (thickening and shrinking), and is extremely hard to change (maybe impossible). But in many cases that may be complicated by a more functional limitation, or even replaced by it — a limitation imposed by a “nervous” nervous system, which is more treatable than contracture. A contractured shoulder will never allow extra movement, but an inhibited shoulder can ease temporarily in some situations, and so even a brief improvement is diagnostic. For instance, functional freezing might back off if you are deeply relaxed and you get someone else to move your shoulder for you extremely gently, or if it’s well-supported by immersion in water. Exercise is also a terrific short-term pain killer and inhibition fighter. And some drugs, like muscle relaxants and other systemic sedatives and psychoactive drugs (benzos, opioids, pot, booze), might soften the intense inhibition of the rotator cuff muscles. Bottom line: any improvement in shoulder range, however fleeting, is impossible if it’s contractured and points to a functional limitation instead. How to identify cases of functional frozen shoulder, dominated by muscular inhibition |
Nov 22, 21Nov '21 | 1,800 | |
How to Treat Sciatic Nerve Pain+There are several ways to have sciatica, a symptom of shooting pain in the buttock and down the back of the leg with many possible causes (not just sciatic nerve irritation). Worrisome causes are rare, but do exist. A user-friendly, evidence-based guide for patients about how to manage buttock and leg pain (which may or may not actually involve the sciatic nerve) | Nov 19, 21Nov '21 | 8,500 | |
When to Worry About Neck Pain … and when not to!+ The most worrisome kinds of neck pain rarely involve severe pain, and common problems like slipped discs are usually much less serious than people fear. Sharp and stabbing pains are usually false alarms. Only about 1% of neck pain is ominous, and even then it’s often still treatable. Most of that 1% is cancer, autoimmune disease, and spinal cord damage. Don’t medically investigate neck pain until it’s met at least three criteria: (1) bothering you for more than about 6 weeks; (2) severe and/or not improving, or actually getting worse; and (3) at least one other “red flag”: age over 55 or under 20, painful to light tapping, fever/malaise/nausea, weight loss, nasty headache, severe stiffness, very distinctive pain, and numbness and/or tingling and/or weakness anywhere else. Note that signs of arthritis are not red flags. Red flags do not confirm that something horrible is going on, just that it’s time to talk to a doctor. And the absence of red flags is not remotely a guarantee that you’re in the clear — but it’s a good start. Red flags versus non-scary possible explanations for bad neck pain |
Nov 3, 21Nov '21 | 4,750 | |
Proprioception, the True Sixth Sense The vital and strange sensation of position, movement, and effort | Oct 29, 21Oct '21 | 2,200 | |
Does Massage Increase Circulation?+ Massage therapy supposedly “increases circulation,” and this is one of the main mechanisms of helping patients. Although massage probably does sometimes modestly boost circulation in some ways, the scientific evidence shows that it’s too little to matter. Most importantly, light exercise is clearly a much stronger driver of circulation. Because the circulatory system is closed and blood volume is constant, circulation can only “increase” in an area at the expense of another. Also, the relaxation that we expect from any decent massage actually shunts blood into the core, away from the muscles, a robust effect that likely dominates the equation. Blood clots broken loose by massage will be swept downstream by the circulation until they finally get trapped by the filter of the lungs, with symptoms ranging from trivial to deadly: a kind of circulatory effect, with vital safety implications. Serious examples are rare, but “minor” lung damage may be disturbingly under-reported. Clots mostly form in the calves (deep vein thrombosis), and so calf massage for a higher-risk person is like playing Russian roulette. Notably, COVID has increased clotting risks in huge numbers of people. Almost certainly not in a clinically important way, and definitely not as much as even a small amount of exercise |
Oct 24, 21Oct '21 | 11,000 | |
Strength Training Frequency+ Strength training is not only more beneficial for general fitness than most people realize, it isn’t even necessary to spend hours at the gym every week to get those benefits. Almost any amount of it is much better than nothing. While more effort will produce better results, the returns diminish rapidly. Just one or two half hour sessions per week can get most of the results that you’d get from two to three times that much of an investment (and that’s a deliberately conservative estimate). This is broadly true of any form of exercise, but especially so with strength training. In a world where virtually everything in health and fitness is controversial, this is actually fairly settled science. Less is more than enough: go to the gym less frequently but still gain strength fast enough for anyone but a bodybuilder |
Oct 24, 21Oct '21 | 9,500 | |
The Art of Rest+Resting “properly” is trickier and a more critical part of injury rehabilitation than most people realize, and is often at odds with a culture tradition of aggressive therapeutic exercise (“no pain, no gain”). This article explores the rationale for resting, and tactical considerations like how to rest anatomy that you need to use for your job, and how to know how much rest is enough. The finer points of resting strategy when recovering from injury and chronic pain (hint: it’s a bit trickier than you might think) | Oct 24, 21Oct '21 | 6,500 | |
Massage Therapy for Bruxism, Jaw Clenching, and TMJ Syndrome+Your masseter muscle is your primary chewing muscle — not the only one, but the main one — and it covers the sides of the jaw just behind the cheeks. It’s also the main muscle that clenches your jaw and grinds your teeth, and it’s one of the most common trigger point locations in the human body. It is probably an accomplice in most cases of bruxism (that’s Latin for “grinding your teeth”) and temporomandibular joint syndrome (jaw joint pain), plus other unexplained painful problems in the area. Perfect Spot No. 7, the masseter muscle of the jaw | Oct 14, 21Oct '21 | 4,250 | |
Vaginismus The psychology, biology, and pain science of vaginal penetration pain disorders | Sep 15, 21Sep '21 | 8,000 | |
MRI and X-Ray Often Worse than Useless for Back Pain+ When it comes to diagnosing low back pain, MRI and X-Ray are egregious false alarm generators. Results are often so misleading that they are worse than useless out of clinical context. Wise use of imaging is a superpower, especially MRI, but it’s often used irresponsibly; overuse and abuse of the technologies is an over-medicalization disaster, criticized for since at least as far back as the 1990s. Low back pain (like most chronic pain) is extremely multifactorial, and the spinal glitches that imaging reveals are just one ingredient in a rich stew of risk factors. Zooming in on what MRIs can show is doomed to diagnostic failure, a classic “streetlight effect” mistake: focusing only where the light is good. Imaging makes it easy to focus on what seems important: the spine. But spines usually look worse than they are. Seemingly serious spinal degeneration is found in high percentages of asymptomatic people. Zooming in it is not only doomed to diagnostic failure, but it can spook people and do real harm, because nothing is more clearly worse for back pain than anxiety. There are also huge quality control problems with MRI, just shoddy work, like bizarrely conflicting results for the same patient from ten different MRI facilities — laughable if it weren’t so tragic. So how should imaging be used? Minimally! Only when it’s strongly indicated by persistent major symptoms, and interpreting results only in clinical context. Patients should politely refuse early MRI and privately resolve to take radiology reports with a huge grain of salt. Medical guidelines “strongly” discourage the use of MRI and X-ray in diagnosing low back pain, because they produce so many false alarms |
Aug 27, 21Aug '21 | 3,250 | |
Cold Laser Therapy Reviewed A critical analysis of treating pain and injury with frickin’ laser beams | Aug 11, 21Aug '21 | 4,500 | |
Does Craniosacral Therapy Work?+ Craniosacral therapy (CST) was founded by an osteopath, John Upledger, and it is mainly done by osteopaths, massage therapists, and a few chiropractors. It’s a “subtle” therapy that involves light holding of the skull and sacrum and almost imperceptible manipulations. Supposedly this affects the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid and has profound therapeutic benefits. Recent, good quality scientific research has shown that it is not possible to affect the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid, and that CST therapists often come to different conclusions when evaluating the same patient. Even the journal of Complementary Therapies in Medicine “found insufficient evidence to support CST,” and Dr. Steve Hartman — an osteopathic physician himself — harshly criticizes CST: “Craniosacral therapy lacks a biologically plausible mechanism, shows no diagnostic reliability, and offers little hope that any direct clinical effect will ever be shown … patients should invest their time, money, and health elsewhere.” Virtually the only thing CST is good for is that it is a relaxing touch therapy, but of course that can (and should) be separated from grandiose claims of therapeutic efficacy. Craniosacral therapists make big promises, but their methods have failed to pass every fair scientific test of efficacy or plausibility |
Jul 2, 21Jul '21 | 4,750 | |
The Dubious Science of Kinesiology Tape+ Therapeutic taping (Kinesio Tape® and several newer competitors) grew out of traditional compression bandaging, got commercialized as a chiropractor’s invention in the 70s, and then exploded in popularity with the innovation of colour at the 2012 Olympics. The hype machine churned out spin-off products, and many dubious claims about therapeutic benefits like injury prevention and performance enhancement. All the attention inspired a lot of research, and so we now know for sure what seemed obvious to many all along: it’s all much ado about nothing. Taping certainly doesn’t increase circulation, enhance performance, promote injury recovery, reduce inflammation, or provide meaningful support. At best it’s just a bit of minor sensory tinkering with trivial, inconsistent pain relief benefits. That’s fine as far as it goes, but consider not feeding your money to a hype machine — it’s not worth it. The origin story and science of therapy tapes like Kinesio Tape, KT Tape, Spider-Tech, RockTape |
May 24, 21May '21 | 5,000 | |
The Respiration Connection How dysfunctional breathing might be a root cause of a variety of common upper body pain problems and injuries | Apr 28, 21Apr '21 | 9,500 | |
The Functional Movement Screen (FMS)+The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is a set of seven physical tests of coordination and strength, especially “core” strength, invented in 1997 and now in widespread use around the world. It was originally proposed as a trouble-detection system, which is baked into the name: it’s a “screen.” Its use in the wild seems to over-reach this stated purpose. The benefits of the popular screening system for athletes might be over-sold by some professionals | Apr 14, 21Apr '21 | 5,000 | |
Missing Serious Symptoms+ Ominous signs and symptoms of serious disease are often overlooked, misinterpreted, and minimized by practitioners of alternative medicine. Partients invest time and money in red herrings, distracted from better diagnostic and therapeutic options (a high “opportunity cost”). The consequences are most tragic when minor problems are missed until they become serious. Most misdiagnosis in alt-med is caused by simple ignorance and preoccupation with pseudoscientific pet theories about disease, but the failure is often more ideological in nature, due to militant dismissal of important precepts of scientific medicine (e.g. germ theory denial). Doctors also overlook problems, of course — nobody’s perfect (see Medical Errors in Perspective). But the chances of a doctor missing a dangerous disease are much lower, because they have far more experience with much sicker people (see Chiropractor, Naturopath Training Way Less Than Doctors). Alternative medicine often diagnoses overconfidently while overlooking or underestimating serious symptoms |
Jan 15, 21Jan '21 | 1,300 | |
Most Pain Treatments Damned With Faint Praise+ Many treatments for pain and injury are supported only by evidence of only modest benefit — so modest that the science damns them with faint praise. The results may be technically positive, but they are not impressive. Weak benefits are often justified as “better than nothing,” but in most cases it’s more likely that the weakly positive results are actually just wrong and the treatment is, in fact, not better than nothing. There are many ways to get results that are a bit inflated: flukes, lies, honest mistakes, and much more (especially statistical jiggery pokery). Unimpressive evidence like this is often integrated into scientific reviews and clinical guidelines, which carry more weight with the uninformed. This is almost standard in alternative medicine, sports medicine, and physical therapy. The great majority of studies that I have reported on for readers since the early 2000s is just barely positive, and even that mostly cannot be trusted. Debate about many controversial therapies — like spinal manipulation, say — is just “fighting over scraps,” if anything at all. Most controversial and alternative therapies are fighting over scraps of “positive” scientific evidence that damn them with the faint praise of small effect sizes that cannot impress |
Dec 13, 20Dec '20 | 2,750 | |
Sensitization in Chronic Pain+Pain itself often modifies the way the central nervous system works, so that a patient actually becomes more sensitive and gets more pain with less provocation. This is called “central sensitization.” (And there’s peripheral sensitization too.) Sensitized patients are not only more sensitive to things that should hurt, but also to ordinary touch and pressure as well. Their pain also “echoes,” fading more slowly than in other people. Pain itself can change how pain works, resulting in more pain with less provocation | Nov 27, 20Nov '20 | 7,500 | |
What Happened To My Barber? Either atlantoaxial instability or vertebrobasilar insufficiency causes severe dizziness and vomiting after massage therapy, with lessons for health care consumers | Nov 23, 20Nov '20 | 4,000 | |
Poisoned by Massage+ Sometimes we feel a bit cruddy and sore after a massage, like it was a big workout. Post-massage soreness and malaise (PMSM) is embraced as a minor side effect and hand-waved away by almost everyone as some kind of no-pain-no-gain thing. But it can be much harsher. Massage is not “detoxifying” in any way (that’s pseudoscientific nonsense). Ironically, it may be the opposite: PMSM may be caused by mild rhabdomyolysis, a type of poisoning. True rhabdo is a medical emergency in which the kidneys are gummed up by myoglobin from crushed muscle. But tamer rhabdo can be caused by physical stress, even just intense exercise (medical reality, see exertional or “white collar” rhabdo)…and quite possibly “deep tissue” massage as well, which is still just a hypothesis. But that hypothesis is getting more evidence-based as evidence accumulates. There are three good formal case studies now (Lai, Tanriover, Chen), and I have many informal ones too: many people find this article and send me reports of post-massage rhabdo signs/symptoms. The phenomenon of PMSM needs explaining, and rhabdo is surprisingly good candidate. There is plenty of plausibility and empirical “smoke” to support the hypothesis. And what if it’s true? A major side effect, totally at odds with faith in the value of strong massage. Mild PMSM also has several possible non-rhabdo explanations, like coincidental mild illness, pathological vulnerability, and psychologically disarming our normal psychological defenses. (A Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction is not a plausible explanation.) And you can’t “flush” the rhabdo (or anything else) away with massage or by drinking a little extra water. Rather than being DE-toxifying, deep tissue massage may actually cause a toxic situation |
Nov 8, 20Nov '20 | 9,500 | |
Insomnia Until it Hurts+Almost everyone needs to take sleep deprivation more seriously. We are used to thinking of insomnia as a symptom, but it can also be hazardous in itself in many ways. Chronic pain is probably aggravated by insomnia or even mild but chronic sleep deprivation. The role of sleep deprivation in chronic pain, especially muscle pain | Oct 28, 20Oct '20 | 4,500 | |
The False Humility of “Facilitating” Healing+ The idea of facilitating self-healing is a cliché of alternative medicine. For example: “A healer just triggers your own ability to heal yourself.” It’s sacharine, silly, inspirational-poster nonsense. More technically, it’s a “deepity,” an idea that is either profound but wrong, or true but trivial. If healing actually could be “facilitated,” that would be miraculous. Facilitated healing is touted to make someone seem like a “healer” without coming right out and saying it, a “humblebrag.” It sounds humble, but it isn’t. It also rationalizes therapy that does not have a clear or specific mechanism. Facilitating self-healing is either real but trivial, or interesting but wrong. |
Oct 9, 20Oct '20 | 1,100 | |
Smoking and Chronic Pain We often underestimate the power of (tobacco) smoking to make things hurt more and longer | Sep 30, 20Sep '20 | 1,400 | |
Sports Injury Prevention Tips A few evidence-based ways to reduce your risk of injury | Sep 24, 20Sep '20 | 3,750 | |
6 Main Causes of Morning Back Pain+ Most morning back pain is probably caused by low-grade inflammation which ramps up with age (“inflammaging”) and is notoriously worse at the start of the day. This common issue can be hard to distinguish from its much rarer cousin, full-blown “inflammatory back pain,” which is more likely to actually wake you up. Other usual suspects include vitamin D deficiency, garden variety muscle pain, fibromyalgia, tissue stress from awkward sleeping postures, and — of course — just poor quality sleep. Nocturnal disc swelling often gets the blame for morning back pain, but it shouldn’t— it’s too speculative. And morning back pain is probably never psychosomatic. Fighting inflammation is simple but not easy: it’s mainly about being as fit and healthy as possible, which includes almost any lifestyle medicine approach, such as a heart-healthy diet (including perhaps fasting), reducing anxiety, better sleep, and avoidance of exercise and metabolic extremes. Vitamin D deficiency is easy to test for and fix, of course. Muscle pain treatment can be much more complex — both an opportunity and a challenge — but may also yield to simple massage techniques and heat. And improving sleep posture is probably the least valuable and most tricky, but it’s worth doing your best to stay in a “neutral” position, and particularly avoiding face down sleeping. There is no ideal mattress for back pain except, maybe, just a good quality new one. “Sleep breaks” may also be a helpful trick. Why is back pain worst first thing in the morning, and what can you do about it? |
Aug 29, 20Aug '20 | 9,500 | |
💩 Massage Therapists Say A compilation of more than 50 examples of the bizarre nonsense spoken by massage therapists with delusions of medical knowledge | Aug 27, 20Aug '20 | 11,000 | |
Plantar Fasciitis Patients Have Thick Soles There’s a connection between plantar fasciitis and a surprisingly thick tissue in the arch of the foot | Jul 14, 20Jul '20 | 1,200 | |
Baxter’s Neuritis versus Plantar Fasciitis+ Baxter’s neuritis (AKA distal tarsal tunnel syndrome) is entrapment of the first branch of the lateral plantar nerve. It’s rare overall, but probably more common in people with stubborn heel pain. It can be considered a cause of plantar fasciitis, or just a condition that gets confused with it. It causes pain much like plantar fasciitis, but with less morning pain, more altered sensation, directly sensitive to pressure on the inside of the heel. “Tarsal tunnel syndrome” is closely related to Baxter’s neuritis, but involves the impingement of nerves just a little higher up, on the inside of the ankle, where they pass through the tarsal tunnel. Concerns about “nerve pain” are overblown in our society. While it seems obvious that pinching nerves will hurt, in fact they are surprisingly tolerant of physical stress (they have to be). But sometimes nerves get pinched harder, for longer, and/or the biological vulnerability is higher for some reason, and the result is peripheral neuropathy. Baxter’s neuritis is probably a phenomenon because of the relatively vulnerable physical predicament of the lateral plantar nerve. And, as with most foot problems, the main rehab challenge is that it’s so hard to reduce physical stresses in the foot without anti-gravity technology. We all tend to assume that entrapped nerves need to be cut free by surgery, like freeing a dolphin from a fishing net. Which can work…but doesn’t always. Conservative care first! Give it a rest, and reduce your vulnerability to neuropathy with health and fitness (lifestyle medicine). A rare nerve entrapment that can explain some stubborn cases of “plantar fasciitis” |
May 28, 20May '20 | 1,600 | |
Why Do Muscles Feel Stiff and Tight?+ “Stiff” and “tight” are imprecise, subjective terms: they are symptoms, a kind of mild pain caused by mostly minor problems. People who feel stiff often assume their range of motion is limited, probably by literally short muscles, but this is rarely the case, despite how it feels. Causes of common stiffness include exercise soreness, “muscle knots,” overuse injuries, arthritis and “inflammaging,” inflammation (from chronic infection, autoimmune disease), by mild widespread pain (fibromyalgia), anxiety disorder, and medication side effects. Paradoxically, even hypermobility is a major cause of the sensation of stiffness! True abnormal muscle tightness (rigidity, spasticity) is called “dystonia,” which occurs with a variety of pathologies, like wry neck or multiple sclerosis. A lot of stiffness caused by dystonia is overshadowed by other symptoms, but some milder dystonias blend right in with other common aches and pains. Ruling out dystonia is not easy. Stiffness is definitely linked to the phenomenon of “muscle knots” (trigger points), but these are just unexplained sore spots in soft tissue — no one knows if they cause any dystonia, but it’s unlikely. Maybe your range of motion is actually limited, or maybe it just feels that way |
May 13, 20May '20 | 5,000 | |
When To Worry About Shortness of Breath … and When Not To+ Difficulty breathing is a common complaint and a tough diagnostic challenge, and there are some serious causes to be aware of. However, almost all non-severe cases are probably caused by minor muscle knots (trigger points), respiratory dysfunction, and/or anxiety: all of which are relatively simple and cheap problems to try to self-treat. Relief may even be surprisingly easy for some patients. It’s safe and cheap to experiment with self-massage for muscular trigger points. Although changing a bad habit is always tricky, respiratory strength training is an effective and worthwhile fitness activity in itself. And learning better anxiety management is something almost anyone can benefit from, even if it doesn’t help the breathing. Three minor causes of a scary symptom that might be treatable |
May 1, 20May '20 | 5,000 | |
Science versus Experience in Musculoskeletal Medicine The conflict between science and clinical experience and pragmatism in the management of aches, pains, and injuries | Apr 12, 20Apr '20 | 4,000 | |
“Windows of Opportunity” in Rehab+A “window of opportunity” (WOO) in therapy is a period of minor pain relief or boosted confidence that facilitates normal activity/exercise, which in turn is what delivers the true rehab value. This is exemplified in some cases of frozen shoulder. A placebo can also generate a bit of WOO, but a good WOO is a little more substantive. The idea of WOOs is also often used as a self-serving justification for ineffective methods that only produce trivial, transient benefits. The importance of WOO in recovery from injury and chronic pain (using frozen shoulder as an major example) | Mar 18, 20Mar '20 | 1,700 | |
Does barefoot running prevent injuries? A dive into the science so far of barefoot or minimalist “natural” running | Mar 17, 20Mar '20 | 7,000 | |
How to Simplify Chronic Pain Puzzles+Occam’s razor is the logical principle that simpler explanations are usually better. It’s a “razor” because it cuts away useless extra ideas. It’s the sharpest tool in my mental shed. I can hardly imagine life without it, let alone troubleshooting pain problems without it. Use Occam’s razor to clean up a mess of theories about your stubborn injury or pain problem | Mar 10, 20Mar '20 | 1,700 | |
Does Cartilage Regeneration Work? A review of knee cartilage “patching” with autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) | Jan 28, 20Jan '20 | 2,750 | |
Does Platelet-Rich Plasma Injection Work?+ Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections bathe troubled cells in a concentrated mixture of platelets from your own blood. Platelets are involved in clotting and wound healing, and so the more-is-better hope is that they’ll stimulate healing “naturally” — regenerative medicine, supposedly. Unfortunately, the hype and costs are high, there could be risks above and beyond the basic risks of any injection, and the science so far is completely discouraging — three major evidence reviews have ruled it “ineffective.” Although it’s plausible and interesting in theory, this stuff just can’t beat placebos in fair tests. An interesting treatment idea for arthritis, tendinopathy, muscle strain and more |
Jan 25, 20Jan '20 | 3,750 | |
Statistical Significance Abuse+The word “significant” in scientific abstracts is routinely misleading. It does not mean that the results are large or meaningful, and in fact is used to hide precisely the opposite. When only “significance” is mentioned, it almost invariably refers to the notoriously problematic “p-value,” a technically-true distraction from the more meaningful truth of a tiny “effect size”: results that are not actually impressive. This practice has been considered bad form by experts for decades, but is still extremely common. A lot of research makes scientific evidence seem much more “significant” than it is | Jan 8, 20Jan '20 | 4,250 | |
Ugly Bags of Mostly Water The chemical composition of human biology | Jan 3, 20Jan '20 | 2,300 | |
Do You Believe in Qi? How to embrace a central concept of Eastern mysticism without being a flake | Dec 19, 19Dec '19 | 1,300 | |
Healer Syndrome+“Healer syndrome” is a common delusion of grandeur in alternative medicine, especially massage therapy, naturopathy, and chiropractic, where many afflicted professionals like to be known as “healers” with allegedly unusual curative powers, vaguely defined, pseudoscientific, or based on the exaggerated importance of a single idea. Such lack of humility is tragically common. Healer syndrome has reached its most extreme in some of the founders of methods of therapy, what I call “modality empires.” The problem with health care professionals, especially in alternative medicine, who want to be known as “healers” | Nov 16, 19Nov '19 | 2,100 | |
Organ Health Does Not Depend on Spinal Nerves!+Are the little bundles of nerves that exit your spine the wellspring of all visceral vitality? Will your organs wilt like neglected house plants if those nerve roots are slightly impinged? No: cut a nerve root completely, and you’ll certainly paralyze something, but not an organ, because organs simply don’t depend on spinal nerve roots. And yet this is what many chiropractors believe, and would like their customers to believe, after a century of contradictory evidence. One of the key selling points for chiropractic care is the anatomically impossible premise that your spinal nerve roots are important to your general health | Nov 12, 19Nov '19 | 4,500 | |
Get in the Pool for Pain Aquatic therapy, aquajogging, water yoga, floating and other water-based treatment and injury rehab options | Nov 5, 19Nov '19 | 3,750 | |
Are Orthotics Worth It? A consumer’s guide to the science and controversies of custom orthotics, orthopedic shoes, and other allegedly corrective foot devices | Oct 11, 19Oct '19 | 5,500 | |
Why So “Negative”?+I criticize many poor ideas in health care, so I often seem “negative,” especially to people who truly believe in treatments I debunk. But defending patients from false hope and fraud is a Good Thing, I also report on many effective treatments, and I have fun taking my subject seriously. Not so negative after all! Answering accusations of negativity, and my reasons and methods for debunking bad treatment options for pain and injury. | Jul 19, 19Jul '19 | 7,000 | |
Pain & Injury Survival Tips Dozens of ideas (and links) for evidence-based rehabilitation and self-treatment for common pain problems and injuries | Jul 17, 19Jul '19 | 14,000 | |
Salamander and Regeneration Science Why does PainScience.com have a salamander mascot? Their regenerative superpower is an inspiring, profound example of what is possible in biology and healing | Jul 9, 19Jul '19 | 2,200 | |
Basic Self-Massage Tips for Myofascial Trigger Points+ Massage therapy isn’t cheap, but you can do some of the work for yourself. Self-massage might seem like trying to tickle yourself, but you may be able to relieve a lot of discomfort by treating your own “trigger points”: sore spots in muscle tissue that often seem to yield to rubbing. It is a safe, cheap, and reasonable experimental approach to self-help for many common pain problems, even though there are many reasons it might fail. No advanced technique is required: it’s mainly just a matter of finding sore spots in troubled areas that feel relevant and briefly applying direct mild to moderate pressure. Learn how to massage your own trigger points (muscle knots) |
Jul 3, 19Jul '19 | 2,750 | |
Muscle Pain as an Injury Complication The story of how I finally “miraculously” recovered from the pain of a serious shoulder injury, long after the injury itself had healed | Jun 6, 19Jun '19 | 4,250 | |
Massage Therapy for Tennis Elbow and Wrist Pain Perfect Spot No. 5, in the common extensor tendon of the forearm | Apr 27, 19Apr '19 | 1,800 | |
The Unstretchables+Many muscles are too awkward to stretch effectively for biomechanical reasons — you simply can’t get good leverage, or another body part is in the way. There are many interesting examples. Eleven muscles you can’t actually stretch hard (but wish you could) | Mar 16, 19Mar '19 | 5,000 | |
Massage Does Not Reduce Inflammation+A unreplicated and deeply flawed 2012 scientific study (Crane et al.) claimed to find that massage reduced inflammation in intensely exercised muscles. The profession of massage therapy took the conclusions at face value and claims that massage “reduces inflammation” are now common. The making of a new massage myth from a high-tech study of muscle samples after intense exercise | Mar 10, 19Mar '19 | 5,500 | |
Hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome In patients with persistent and widespread muscle pain | Jan 4, 19Jan '19 | 1,900 | |
Contrast Hydrotherapy “Exercising” tissues with quick changes in temperature, to help with pain and injury rehab (especially repetitive strain injuries) | Dec 12, 18Dec '18 | 3,500 | |
What Can a Runner With Knee Pain Do at the Gym? Some training options and considerations for runners (and others) with overuse injuries of the knee | Nov 10, 18Nov '18 | 4,000 | |
The Not-So-Humble Healer Cocky theories about the cause of pain are waaaay too common in massage, chiropractic, and physical therapy | Oct 26, 18Oct '18 | 4,500 | |
Tennis Ball Massage for Myofascial Trigger Points Some creative tips on using a tennis ball (and other tools) to self-massage myofascial trigger points | Oct 19, 18Oct '18 | 2,400 | |
Pain Relief from Personal Growth Treating tough pain problems with the pursuit of emotional intelligence, life balance, and peacefulness | Sep 29, 18Sep '18 | 4,250 | |
(Almost) Never Use Ice on Low Back Pain!+ Icing is a popular treatment option for back and neck pain. Neither icing nor heating have much potential to actually relieve acute back pain, but ice is relatively likely to actually backfire. The effects of icing and heating are dominated by the mind, by our expectations and preferences, not their biological effects. Any minor anti-inflammatory effect of icing is usually wasted because there’s less inflammation and injury in back pain than people think, and even when it is a factor it’s usually too deep in the tissue to be affected by ice on the skin. But ice can dial-up pain sensitivity: it’s far more likely to make us “tense up.” Patient preference is key, but there are good reasons to err on the side of heat, and ice should only be used on the backs of patients who clearly prefer it (for whatever reason)… or when there’s clearly a fresh and superficial injury. An important exception to conventional wisdom about icing and heating |
Sep 29, 18Sep '18 | 3,500 | |
Toxins, Schmoxins!+ The idea of “toxins” is usually used as a tactic to scare people into buying some kind of de-toxifying snake oil. Obviously there are dangerous substances; the problem is with the kind of people who toss the idea around, the reasons they do it (fear, profit, ignorance), and because toxin claims are usually so vague that they are literally meaningless, except as a marketing message. Indeed, “detoxification” may be the single most common marketing buzzword in alternative health care. The body deals with undesirable molecules in many ways. It eliminates some and recycles others; some are trapped in a safe place; and quite a few can’t be safely handled at all (metals). Most alleged “detox” treatments are focused on stimulating an excretion pathway, like sweating in a sauna. But it’s not like sweating is broken and the sauna is fixing it! The only truly “detoxifying” treatments help the body eliminate or disarm molecules the body cannot process on its own. A stomach pump for someone with alcohol poisoning is literally “detoxifying.” So are chelation for heavy metals, and antivenoms. I cover the specific idea of “flushing” toxins in Why Drink Water After Massage? (Massage is wonderful for all kinds of reasons — it doesn’t need the support of the idea that it detoxifies.) For more general consumer advocacy and education about toxins, see “Detoxification” Schemes and Scams (from QuackWatch.org). The idea of “toxins” is used to scare people into buying snake oil |
Sep 25, 18Sep '18 | 1,900 | |
Knee Debridement is a Completely Ineffective Procedure Evidence that arthroscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritis is about as useful as a Nerf hammer | Sep 8, 18Sep '18 | 1,600 | |
Why Drink Water After Massage?+It’s just polite to offer patients a glass of water after a treatment. But therapists who make a production of it as a necessary part of the therapy are just proving their ignorance. No reason! Massage therapy does not flush toxins into the bloodstream, and water wouldn’t help if it did | Sep 1, 18Sep '18 | 5,500 | |
Therapy Babble Hyperbolic, messy, pseudoscientific ideas about manual therapy for pain and injury rehab are all too common | Aug 29, 18Aug '18 | 5,000 | |
Extraordinary Health Claims A guide to critical thinking, skepticism, and smart Internet reading about health care | Aug 29, 18Aug '18 | 4,500 | |
Studying the Pain Studies Tips and musings about how to understand (and write about) the extremely flawed science of pain and musculoskeletal medicine | Jul 7, 18Jul '18 | 5,000 | |
Massage Therapy for Neck Pain, Chest Pain, Arm Pain, and Upper Back Pain Perfect Spot No. 4, an area of common trigger points in the odd scalene muscle group in the neck | Jun 13, 18Jun '18 | 3,750 | |
Does Hip Strengthening Work for IT Band Syndrome? The popular “weak hips” theory is itself weak | Apr 24, 18Apr '18 | 3,500 | |
Deep Friction Massage Therapy for Tendinitis A guide to a simple self-massage technique sometimes helpful in treating common tendinitis injuries like tennis elbow or Achilles tendinitis | Mar 1, 18Mar '18 | 5,500 | |
You’re Really Tight The three most common words in massage therapy are pointless | Jan 27, 18Jan '18 | 2,750 | |
Is Running on Pavement Risky? Hard-surface running might be a risk factor for running injuries like patellofemoral pain, IT band syndrome, shin splints, and plantar fasciitis | Jan 21, 18Jan '18 | 8,500 | |
Do Nerve Blocks Work for Neck Pain and Low Back Pain? Analysis of the science of stopping the pain of facet joint syndrome with nerve blocks, joint injections, and nerve ablation | Dec 9, 17Dec '17 | 3,000 | |
Healing Time+ Healing speed is of great interest, and people often believe that treatment X helped them to heal faster. It’s also a common marketing claim. Unfortunately, most patients aren’t the least bit knowledgeable about what constitutes a normal healing time, and should probably defer to clinicians who have seen hundreds or even thousands of examples — except that they don’t really know either, because they do know that healing time varies wildly depending on countless variables. People often recover faster or slower than expected for reasons no one can ever know. We also seem to recover faster or slower depending on which psychological “goggles” we have on (optimistic, pessimistic, etc). The bottom line is that the natural variation in healing times tends to obscure the effects of treatments, and simply isn’t actually possible to know if any treatment helped us heal “faster,” because we can never know how long it would have taken without it. You also don’t know what will happen the next time. The only possible way to settle such questions and confirm a faster average recovery time — especially if it’s only a little bit faster — is with carefully designed scientific testing, and quite a bit of it. Can healing be hurried? Would we even notice if it was? |
Dec 4, 17Dec '17 | 1,700 | |
IT Band Stretching Does Not Work Stretching the iliotibial band is a popular idea, but it’s very hard to do it right, and it’s probably not worth it | Dec 1, 17Dec '17 | 3,500 | |
Dupuytren’s Contracture The tip of a mysterious pathological iceberg | Nov 2, 17Nov '17 | 2,500 | |
Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain (Again) Perfect Spot No. 13, The Most Classic Low Back Pain Trigger Point | Nov 1, 17Nov '17 | 1,700 | |
Why Do We Get Sick? The curious and tangled connections between pain, poor health, and the lives we lead | Oct 7, 17Oct '17 | 4,000 | |
Is Diagnosis for Pain Problems Reliable? Reliability science shows that health professionals can’t agree on many popular theories about why you’re in pain | Sep 23, 17Sep '17 | 3,250 | |
The Power of Barking: Correlation, causation, and how we decide what treatments work A silly metaphor for a serious point about the confounding power of coincidental and inevitable healing, and why we struggle to interpret our own recovery experiences | May 17, 17May '17 | 2,300 | |
Massage Therapy for Back Pain, Hip Pain, and Sciatica Perfect Spot No. 6, an area of common trigger points in the gluteus medius and minimus muscles of the hip | May 15, 17May '17 | 2,100 | |
Ice versus Heat for Pain and Injury+Once and for all, learn when to ice, when to heat, when not to, and why. In a nutshell, ice is for fresh injuries, and heat is for stiff, aching muscles, especially back pain. But the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of them. When to use ice, when to heat, when not to, and why | Apr 18, 17Apr '17 | 1,600 | |
Digital Motion X-Ray: A Dangerous Illusion of Diagnostic Power+ Digital motion X-ray (DMX) is an X-ray video: many X-ray images strung together to make a movie. The output is impressive. In theory, it can reveal serious problems that somehow eluded diagnosis otherwise. In practice, this unregulated and banned-in-Canada technology is primarily sold to neck pain patients by chiropractors, often for evidence in personal injury lawsuits, and is eschewed in medicine because of concern about radiation exposure. DMX undoubtedly has some potential to show important things, but is it worth an increased risk of cancer to diagnose conditions that, mostly, can and should be diagnosed any other way? It’s not completely out of the question, but you should get multiple medical opinions and think hard before resorting to this exotic diagnostic method. What’s the risk from the radiation exposure? Is the diagnostic potential worth it? |
Feb 22, 17Feb '17 | 1,500 | |
Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain Perfect Spot No. 2, in the erector spinae and quadratus lumborum muscles in the thoracolumbar corner | Jan 27, 17Jan '17 | 1,900 | |
Patellofemoral Pain & the Vastus Medialis Myth Can just one quarter of the quadriceps be the key to anterior knee pain? | Jan 14, 17Jan '17 | 1,900 | |
Objectivity is Overrated+Objectivity and balance are highly over-rated as journalistic virtues. They are mostly a pretentious delusion, and we should never trust anyone who claims to be objective. Instead of expecting that, look for someone with a “view from somewhere” (Rosen) from someone who isn’t afraid to disclose and own where they are coming from. The ideal is not to be unbiased, but to be biased with integrity. A response to the common accusation of bias and the mythical virtue of objectivity and journalistic “balance” | Nov 26, 16Nov '16 | 650 | |
The Trigger Point Identity Crisis The biological evidence that a trigger point is a lesion in muscle tissue | Oct 11, 16Oct '16 | 3,750 | |
Do IT Band Straps Work for Runner’s Knee? The science of knee straps for iliotibial band syndrome (runner’s knee) | Oct 6, 16Oct '16 | 1,600 | |
Ioannidis: Making Medical Science Look Bad Since 2005 A famous and excellent scientific paper … with an alarmingly misleading title | Sep 15, 16Sep '16 | 3,250 | |
Toxic Muscle Knots Research suggests myofascial trigger points may be quagmires of irritating molecules | Sep 6, 16Sep '16 | 2,000 | |
Massage Therapy for Upper Back Pain Perfect Area No. 11, the erector spinae muscle group of the upper back | Aug 30, 16Aug '16 | 1,500 | |
Patellofemoral Tracking Syndrome The beating heart of the conventional wisdom about patellofemoral pain is mostly nonsense | Aug 23, 16Aug '16 | 3,000 | |
Massage Therapy for Shoulder Pain Perfect Spot No. 14, The Most Predictable Unsuspected Cause of Shoulder Pain | Aug 10, 16Aug '16 | 2,400 | |
Icing, Heating & Tissue Temperature+ Heating pads and ice packs are supposed to work by warming/cooling underlying soft tissues and joints, but can they overcome the body’s powerful mechanisms for maintaining tisue temperature? The science is incomplete, but suggests that we can change tissue temperature by a few degrees Celsius up to a couple centimetres with rapidly diminishing returns. That’s just enough to affect some muscles and smaller joints, but definitely not enough for many of the bigger ones. Also, almost any amount of fat over the target tissue will render superficial heating or cooling pointless. How much do ice packs and heating pads change the temperature of deeper muscle and joints? |
Aug 1, 16Aug '16 | 1,700 | |
Hydrotherapy, Water-Powered Rehab A guide to using warm and cold water as a treatment for pain and injury | Aug 1, 16Aug '16 | 1,700 | |
Does the IT Band Move After All? An ultrasound study says it does indeed slide across the lateral epicondyle, debunking my debunkery and prolonging the controversy | Jul 20, 16Jul '16 | 2,000 | |
The Causes of Runner's Knee Are Rarely Obvious The science shows that you usually can’t blame IT band pain or patellofemoral pain on the structural quirks that seem like “obvious” problems | Jul 20, 16Jul '16 | 1,500 | |
The Bath Trick for Trigger Point Release A clever way of combining self-treatment techniques to self-treat your trigger points (muscle knots) | Jul 7, 16Jul '16 | 850 | |
A Recipe for Chronic Neck Pain After Whiplash Researchers discover some surprising risk factors for chronic neck pain in the aftermath of whiplash | Jun 23, 16Jun '16 | 1,200 | |
What if You Could Wipe the Chronic Pain Slate Clean? A short, poignant thought experiment for chronic pain sufferers | Jun 15, 16Jun '16 | 475 | |
Spinal Subluxation+ Spinal joints can get into a few different types of trouble, but “subluxation” and spinal joints being “out” are not defined clearly enough to be useful, and are quite misleading. “Subluxation” is mainly a chiropractic idea of some kind of spinal joint dysfunction, with many shades of meaning — too many — depending on who is talking about it. However, it is inextricably entangled with the idea of a spinal joint being “out” of place, and it is this sense of the word that needs some debunking. Many chiropractors attribute great importance to subluxation. Most believe, at the least, that subluxations cause neck and back pain, but — significantly — quite a few of them also believe that subluxations cause a wide variety of other health problems and so they “use spinal manipulation to treat visceral disease” (Homola). Subluxation theory has been both popular and controversial for many decades now, and it has never achieved medical respectability. Many experts, including quite a few chiropractors, deny that spinal subluxations exist in any meaningful sense. It’s problematic that spinal manipulative therapy — the umbrella term for all kinds of spinal joint “adjustment” — is so often based on such a confusing and controversial concept. Subluxation has too much baggage to be a useful term. Let’s use more modern and specific terminology, and get away from the idea of spinal joints being “out.” Can your spine be out of alignment? Chiropractic’s big idea has been misleading patients for more than a century |
Jun 15, 16Jun '16 | 2,000 | |
Long term results of spinal fusion: good news and bad? The results of the long-term Swedish lumbar spine study seemed mixed at first, but are probably just negative | Jun 1, 16Jun '16 | 1,400 | |
Painfully Odd Google Searches Odd, amusing (and occasionally tragic) Google searches that have led people to this website | May 31, 16May '16 | 1,300 | |
Chiropractor, Naturopath Training Way Less Than Doctors+ Many alternative health care practitioners, especially chiropractors, claim that they are as well trained as physicians. This is false. Doctor’s academic training is routinely longer, and — more importantly — most of their serious learning occurs during extensive on-the-job training, where they are thrust into demanding clinical environments and supervised for years as they deal with a great variety of clinical situations and many extremely sick and hurt patients. That hands-on phase of their training is where all doctors will tell you that they became professionals — and there is nothing like it in any non-medical health care training. Medical training is much longer and better than anything naturopaths or chiropractors normally get |
May 31, 16May '16 | 1,300 | |
T’ai Chi Helps Fibromyalgia, but It’s Not “Alternative” Medicine Despite a high profile boost from the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s still just gentle, elegant, and pleasant exercise | May 19, 16May '16 | 1,200 | |
Back Pain & Trigger Points A quick introduction to the role of trigger points and massage therapy in back pain | May 12, 16May '16 | 650 | |
Hot Baths for Injury & Pain Tips for getting the most benefit from a hot soak, the oldest form of therapy | Apr 23, 16Apr '16 | 4,250 | |
How Do Your Find Good Quality Massage Therapy? Tips for finding good quality medical massage, and avoiding nonsense and quackery | Nov 18, 15Nov '15 | 7,000 | |
A Painful Biological Glitch that Causes Pointless Inflammation+Research has shown that immune cells (neutrophils) unnecessarily “swarm” sterile injury sites, causing damage and pain with no known or likely benefit as a tradeoff. It’s just a clear error: they appear to have mistaken mitochondria for a foreign organism, a legacy of ancient evolutionary history, and a biological glitch with profound implications about why some painful problems are so severe and stubborn. How an evolutionary wrong turn led to a biological glitch that condemned the animal kingdom — you included — to much louder, longer pain | Oct 22, 15Oct '15 | 6,500 | |
Patellofemoral Pain Diagnosis with Bone Scan If you have anterior knee pain, should you bother x-ray, MRI, CT scan, or bone scan? | Oct 2, 15Oct '15 | 1,300 | |
Is Knee Pain More Common in Women? The relationship between sex and knee pain, especially runner’s knee (IT band syndrome, patellofemoral pain) | Oct 2, 15Oct '15 | 1,200 | |
Palpatory Pareidolia & Diagnosis by Touch Tactile illusions, wishful thinking, and the belief in advanced diagnostic palpation skills in massage and other touchy health care | Sep 17, 15Sep '15 | 3,500 | |
Applied Kinesiology is Bunk+ Applied kinesiology (AK) muscle testing is a pseudoscientific method of diagnosis used by many chiropractors and naturopaths, and denounced as an absurd parlour trick by everyone else. (AK has no relationship to kinesiology, the legitimate study of human movement — it just benefits from the legitimacy of that term.) Practitioners believe that changes in muscle strength, reacting to substances placed in the aura and probing questions, reveal the sensitivities and needs of the patient. This is about as scientific as a ouija board. There is almost no real AK research, of course: no real scientist would bother. Patients are often impressed by AK, because it exploits potent illusions based on the ideomotor and observer-expectancy or subject-expectancy (power of suggestion) effects. It fools practitioners just as readily as it fools patients: most are deluded true believers, not scam artists. The skeptical position on applied kinesiology, a bizarre and extreme alternative medicine method of diagnosis practiced mainly by chiropractors and naturopaths |
Jul 16, 15Jul '15 | 1,100 | |
Insurance Is Not Evidence Debunking the idea that “it must be good if insurance companies pay for it” | Jul 9, 15Jul '15 | 900 | |
Healing Usually Accelerates The better you get, the faster you get better, a “delicious cycle” — but what if it doesn’t? | Jun 2, 15Jun '15 | 1,800 | |
The Pricing of PainScience.com Content A candid explanation of my prices and how I sell (a small percentage) of what I write | Apr 20, 15Apr '15 | 1,700 | |
Massage Therapy for Your Pectorals Perfect Spot No. 9, in the pectoralis major muscle of the chest | Apr 3, 15Apr '15 | 1,100 | |
What’s a “Claim” in Health Care?+ A claim is any unverified assertion. But not all claims are created equal. In health care and health science, “claim” implies a more self-serving assertion. If a claim could be used as a bullet-point in a sales pitch for a product or service, it’s more claim-y. If it makes you (or your profession) look better, it’s more claim-y. And the more claim-y it is, the more it needs to be backed up. This special case of the word “claim” comes from the thorny ethical challenges with selling care to sick, hurt people. All claims need critical appraisal and verification, but it’s just not as ethically critical if it has no claim-stink. Sagan’s idea that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is not just about alien abductions and lake monsters. It’s also, in spirit, about more mundane but self-serving and profitable claims — a more common ethical hazard than truly extraordinary claims. In health care, claims often involve a more self-serving assertion |
Feb 19, 15Feb '15 | 500 | |
Review of The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook A popular book that promises too much and ignores recent science and controversies, which alienates many physicians and sets patients up for disappointment | Jan 3, 15Jan '15 | 2,000 | |
Masking Pain is Under-Rated+ “Masking symptoms,” especially with medications, is often maligned because it doesn’t “aid healing” or “treat the root cause.” But masking symptoms can be a perfectly good idea, and it should not be eschewed just because it doesn’t have a real healing effect … because there are very few real healing effects! Maybe none. There are few or no known ways to actually improve on the biological process of healing. We can’t tell the body, “Hey, heal better, will ya?” “Healing” is mainly about removing impediments to natural recovery, such as continued overuse and excessive stress. It’s not dictated by some mythical power to speed healing, but by a strong understanding of the nature of the problem and what pisses it off and slows recovery. The most idiotically simple example is that bad sprains need to be immobilized for a while, just like a fracture — and maybe that seems “obvious,” but it was actually common practice for decades to recommend excessive early mobilization. Here’s a classic, trickier example: patellofemoral pain is often misdiagnosed and “treated” with strength training that tends to stress the knee even more, and yet it often works to simply avoid sitting with bent knees, because that position is more biomechanically “intense” than most patients realize. Removing that sneaky knee stress isn’t “healing,” per se, but it’s sure important! Focus on facilitating natural recovery, and don’t knock a little “symptom relief” along the way. Masking symptoms,” especially with medications, is often maligned, but sometimes symptoms need masking — especially pain! |
Sep 6, 14Sep '14 | 900 | |
Why “Science”-Based Instead of “Evidence”-Based? The rationale for making medicine based more on science and not just evidence… which is kinda weird | Aug 26, 14Aug '14 | 2,750 | |
‘Reductionism’ Is Not an Insult+ Alternative medicine practitioners often derisively accuse their critics of being “reductionist.” This is intended to sound wise and knowing, but sneering at reductionism is a transparently convenient way to dismiss rational objections to crank theories and flaky bullshit. It insultingly insinuates a lack of vision and savvy about complex systems (like the body). It’s just an ideological gripe, not a meaningful thought, about people who allegedly can’t see the forest for the trees. (This is quite ironic, coming as it usually does from barely-trained dabblers and dilettantes, people who clearly have not exactly mastered either forest or trees.) Certainly reductionism can go wrong, like nearly any mental mode, but it’s not an intellectual failing. It’s just one of many thinking and reasoning tools … not an all-consuming obliviousness to “the whole.” Reducing complex systems in nature to their components is not a bad thing |
Aug 25, 14Aug '14 | 1,300 | |
Neck Pain, Submerged! The story of my curious experiment with dunking severe chronic neck pain | Dec 3, 13Dec '13 | 5,000 | |
Why Massage Therapy? An attempt to explain the magic of touch therapy, and why I decided to become a Registered Massage Therapist | Aug 26, 13Aug '13 | 4,500 | |
The Mind Game in Low Back Pain How back pain is powered by fear and loathing, and greatly helped by rational confidence | Jul 1, 13Jul '13 | 1,400 | |
Thixotropy is Nifty, but It’s Not Therapy+Thixotropy is the property of some gels or fluids that are normally thick (viscous), but thin when they are stressed. In the human body, the synovial fluid that lubricates most joints is thixotropic, as is the gelatinous “ground substance,” which is part of all connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments. (Fun fact: semen is also thixotropic.) Thixotropy is one of the reasons that we loosen up a little as we move around, just like engine oil warming up. However, thixotropic effect is not a therapeutic effect, and does not explain “releases” in massage or fascial therapy: it is too minor, slow, and temporary, and connective tissue is too tough. A curious property of connective tissue is often claimed as a therapy | Feb 19, 13Feb '13 | 1,100 | |
Massage Therapy for Shin Splints Perfect Spot No. 3, in the tibialis anterior muscle of the shin | Oct 27, 12Oct '12 | 2,200 | |
Massage Therapy for Tired Feet (and Plantar Fasciitis!) Perfect Spot No. 10, in the arch muscles of the foot | Oct 25, 12Oct '12 | 1,300 | |
Massage Therapy for Your Quads Perfect Spot No. 8, another one for runners, the distal vastus lateralis of the quadriceps group | Oct 2, 12Oct '12 | 2,100 | |
How I Recovered from IT Band Pain, Eventually The story of how I got a nasty case of IT band syndrome in both knees & then studied the condition intensively until I could finally beat it | Sep 12, 12Sep '12 | 2,750 | |
Is IT Band Tendinitis Really a Tendinitis? Research has clearly shown that the IT band itself is probably not the anatomy that gets inflamed … which has significant implications for treatment | Jan 23, 12Jan '12 | 1,200 | |
A Stretching Experiment+What happens when you stretch your hamstrings intensely for several minutes a day in a steam room? The results of a thorough, careful personal experiment. Your mileage may vary! What happens when you stretch your hamstrings intensely for several minutes a day in a steam room? | Dec 1, 11Dec '11 | 5,000 | |
Stretching Injury How I almost ripped my own head off! A cautionary tale about the risks of injury while stretching | Nov 2, 11Nov '11 | 1,600 | |
Review of the Backnobber II & Knobble II Plus four other massage tools from the Pressure Positive Company: the Index Knobber, Jacknobber, Orbit Massager and Tiger Tail | Nov 1, 11Nov '11 | 2,200 | |
Massage Therapy Kinda, Sorta Works for Back Pain It works, but not very well, and “advanced” techniques are no better than relaxation massage | Aug 10, 11Aug '11 | 5,000 | |
A Cranky Review of Dr. John Sarno’s Books & Ideas Sarno’s methods are historically important, based on a kernel of an important truth that has been blown waaaay out of proportion | Apr 21, 11Apr '11 | 2,400 | |
The Anatomy of Vitality What makes life tick? A poetic romp through the substance of vitality | Jun 27, 09Jun '09 | 3,250 | |
Endurance Training for Pain & Rehab Why endurance training might be a wise alternative to strength training (especially when healing from an injury) | Nov 30, 06Nov '06 | 1,800 | |
PF-ROM Exercises ‘Pain-free range of motion’ or early mobilization exercises can help you heal | Nov 29, 06Nov '06 | 1,500 | |
Singing, Breathing, and Scalenes Connections between singing, breathing, neck pain, and a strange group of muscles | Jun 26, 04Jun '04 | 2,500 |