Stretch for the treatment and prevention of contractures
Tags: treatment, exercise, stretch, controversy, self-treatment, muscle, debunkery
Five pages on PainSci cite Harvey 2017: 1. The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain 2. Quite a Stretch 3. Why So “Negative”? 4. Complete Guide to Frozen Shoulder 5. Dupuytren’s Contracture
PainSci notes on Harvey 2017:
This is a Cochrane review of static stretch for the treatment and prevention of contractures. The verdict? A clear thumbs down. Based on “high-quality evidence” they concluded that “stretch is not effective for the treatment and prevention of contractures.”
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Common interventional procedures for chronic non-cancer spine pain: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised trials. Wang 2025 BMJ.
- Gabapentinoids and Risk of Hip Fracture. Leung 2024 JAMA Netw Open.
- Classical Conditioning Fails to Elicit Allodynia in an Experimental Study with Healthy Humans. Madden 2017 Pain Med.
- Topical glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) and eccentric exercises in the treatment of mid-portion achilles tendinopathy (the NEAT trial): a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Kirwan 2024 Br J Sports Med.
- Placebo analgesia in physical and psychological interventions: Systematic review and meta-analysis of three-armed trials. Hohenschurz-Schmidt 2024 Eur J Pain.