Spine wrangling ∞
Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.
Fun fact: the spine is tough and strong and difficult to stabilize without surgically installing screws and rods, and even then it’s tricky: spinal fixations occasionally fall apart (my wife’s did). In fact, it’s so hard to control spinal movement that the value of external bracing in spinal fracture rehab remains controversial. Worse, one fascinating experiment (Rohlmann et al) showed that bracing may actually cause some, dysfunctional spinal function — resulting in less support, rather than more!