What’s New on PainScience.com?
New featured articles, updates to articles, recent blog posts, and noteworthy new scientific papers
See also the about page, complete articles index, and sitemap.
I have been expanding and upgrading this website for 20 years now, and full-time since 2010. Useful new references are added almost daily. I am always working on an endless list of improvements, and corrections and mea culpas are always the highest priority items. This page lists everything that’s new or changed lately … or just Google for content that’s new in the last month or year. ~ Paul Ingraham, PainSci Publisher
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The 10 newest featured articles on PainScience.com (out of 240)
- Bone on Bone » Jun 2024
- DMSO for Pain » Jun 2024
- Manual Therapy: What is it, and does it work? » Jan 2024
- Reluctantly Reconsidering RESTORE » Dec 2023
- Whole Body Cryotherapy for Pain » Nov 2023
- Does Pandiculation “Reset” Muscle Tone? » Jan 2023
- The Double-Edged Sword of Imaging to Diagnose Pain » Mar 2022
- The Tibiofibular Joint and Knee Pain » Feb 2022
- Ozone Therapy for Pain » Dec 2021
The last 60 updates to featured articles and tutorials
Like good footnotes, update logging sets PainScience.com apart from most other health websites and blogs. It’s fine print, but important fine print, in the same spirit of transparency as the editing history available for Wikipedia pages. I log any change to articles that might be of interest to a keen reader.
Current Update Stats — 60 updates to 30 articles & books in 203 days, breaking down into 24 major updates, 22 medium, 14 minor. That’s every 3.4 days in recent history; there have been 1745 updates since comprehensive logging started in mid-2016 ?Comprehensive update logging started in the summer of 2016. Prior to that, I only logged major updates for the most popular and controversial articles. (about one every other day) … plus very roughly ten thousand more since the early 2000s. See the complete update archives.
showing of 60 recent updates
| L | Oct 9 | Guide to Repetitive Strain Injuries — Substantial editing, revision, and upgrades for the (very large) members only section of this article. |
| S | Oct 9 | Progressive Training — Minor science update. |
| S | Sep 30 | What Works for Chronic Pain? — Added “a new generation of pain-killers” as a third category of legitimately promising “advanced” approaches to pain. |
| M | Sep 19 | The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome — Science update, patellar circulation — At last, some long-awaited new patellar circulation evidence, plus significant revision and other improvements, especially the addition of a new discussion about the therapeutic implications (does exercise improve circulation, mainly). |
| L | Sep 16 | Quite a Stretch — New — Substantial new sidebar, “Reciprocal inhibition invalidated,” about how a major premise for “advanced” PNF stretching was largely disproven in 2009. |
| S | Sep 16 | Pain is Weird — Science update, pulsatile pain — Added a dash of extra science about how the rhythm of pulsatile pain is set (if it’s not the heart rate). |
| M | Sep 8 | Chronic Pain and Inequality — Science update: added a citation to Jin, showing strong links between systemic racism and chronic pain, with a particularly robust footnote on the topic. |
| M | Sep 6 | Cramps, Spasms, Tremors & Twitches — New section about magnesium for cramps. |
| L | Sep 5 | Placebo Power Hype — Added a section about placebo analgesia — very better-late-than-never in the evolution of this article! Also added a new summary for the article, and a nerdy but critical clarification about the difference between the placebo “effect” versus “response.” There are two important new citations to Evers and Hohenschurz-Schmidt. |
| S | Aug 28 | Does Ultrasound Therapy Work? — Science update for ESWT for plantar fasciitis. |
| S | Aug 28 | Zapped! Does TENS work for pain? — Science update for pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. |
| M | Aug 22 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — Science update, intro to the nature of the beast — First update to this section in eight years, because the basic point has been sound the whole time. What changed? Better science, just a particularly good and relevant study that supports the gist of this introduction more strongly than anything that was available before. |
| M | Aug 21 | 38 Surprising Causes of Pain — Complete re-write of the toxins and poisons section. |
| L | Aug 19 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — Major upgrade, food additives — Added new examples and much more detail, plus a new image. |
| M | Aug 19 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — Upgrade, microplastics — More detail, added an image. |
| L | Aug 19 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — Major upgrade, pollutants — More detailed hazard and risk assessment, much more information about lead, new images, and useful good news about indoor air quality management options. |
| L | Aug 14 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — New section. |
| M | Aug 13 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — Upgraded, surgical meshes — Expanded and improved the discussion of surgical meshes, especially acknowledging the degree of controversy and lack of evidence. |
| L | Aug 8 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — New sub-topic, allergies — Added a discussion of “Mammalian meat allergy” (yes, a real thing). The section was also removed from the member’s only area and is now available to all. |
| L | Aug 6 | Strength Training for Pain & Injury Rehab — New sub-topic, “Strengthening headwinds and handicaps.” |
| M | Jul 29 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — New sub-topic, backpacks and back pain. |
| L | Jul 25 | Placebo Power Hype — Added a new members-only section: “3 placebo paradoxes pacified.” |
| S | Jul 25 | Reluctantly Reconsidering RESTORE — Added a footnote clarifying a potentially controversial point about the nature of CFT. |
| S | Jul 24 | Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements for Pain & Healing — Added a sidebar summarizing the potential harms of supplements. |
| L | Jul 21 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — New chapter, all about walking for back pain. |
| M | Jul 16 | Quite a Stretch — Revised intro — Thoroughly re-wrote the introduction and summaries (which are often used when the article is cited by other articles). It’s amazing to me that I can re-visit one of my oldest and most polished articles and immediately find many ways to improve it! Revising introdutions and summaries isn't all that significant for readers, at least not consciously, but it is an art form unto itself — it takes a great deal of thoughtful work to capture as many key points as possible from the body of the article and compress them as much as possible. |
| L | Jul 5 | Many Pages — Significant under-the-hood upgrade to the site. PainSci grew out of two different “content management systems,” which has slowly become a major publishing challenge. This update begins the process of merging them. While largely invisible to visitors, there are a few useful changes: for instance, bibliography pages now “know about” blog posts, and can say which five posts they’ve been cited in. That was a long time coming, I can tell you! |
| M | Jul 4 | Knee Replacement Surgery Doubts — New section: “Severe arthritis: does ‘bone-on-bone’ mean you need surgery? You should be more worried about surgeons who say BOB than your arthritis.” |
| M | Jul 4 | Bone on Bone — Miscellaneous minor improvements, added audio versions, integrated with other closely related articles, especially Knee Replacement Surgery Doubts. |
| L | Jul 3 | Bone on Bone — Extensive minor improvements. |
| L | Jul 1 | Bone on Bone — Publication. |
| M | Jun 29 | DMSO for Pain — Added a section about DMSO2. |
| M | Jun 28 | DMSO for Pain — Numerous improvements, individually minor, collectively significant. Great example of a “day after” update! Twenty-four hours ago I felt done and I was out of ideas, but I just spent 90 minutes improving it. |
| L | Jun 24 | Opioids for Chronic Aches & Pains — Major improvements and updates, adding more information and perspective about the drug war, opioid phobia, and more and newer evidence about the efficacy of opioids for acute and chronic pain. |
| S | Jun 19 | You Might Just Be Weird — Minor improvements. |
| M | Jun 11 | Chronic Pain as a Conditioned Behaviour — A bunch of editing. |
| M | Jun 4 | The Trouble with Chairs — Science update. After flip-flopping repeatedly over the years on the question of whether or not sedentariness is a threat to backs, I have given up and shifted this article to an “it’s complicated” position. Good contradictory studies have now been cited. The story is now about the perpetual controversy and uncertainty. |
| M | Jun 4 | Alternative Medicine’s Choice — Science update. Added a couple citations about the harm that can be done by health care institutions and (closely related) physicians who lack empathy. |
| M | May 31 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — Minor addition, posture chapter — Added a bit of a rant, some summary perspective and colour: “Chasing posture as a cause of back pain is a dead end.” |
| S | May 29 | The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome — Editing, multiple topics — Just editing, but a noteworthy batch of edits to several chapters. I made minor corrections and adjustments to every recently added or revised chapter, and some small but (I hope) meaningful clarifications to how “resting” is presented as a treatment strategy. |
| L | May 27 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — New chapter, risk factors — New chapter, inspired by new evidence, about how being out of shape is probably worse for your spine than biomechanical glitches, and how back pain patients eat more junk food. |
| M | May 22 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — Revised, vicious cycle hypothesis — This is mostly an old chapter, but reframed, revised, with significant clarifications and caveats added. Despite being mostly the same, it’s quite different! |
| L | May 22 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — New chapter, anxiety and back pain. |
| M | May 16 | Reluctantly Reconsidering RESTORE — Conversion from a members-only blog post to a free article in the main PainSci library, with a variety of minor adjustments. |
| M | May 15 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — More detail — More and better information about the dramatic over-prescription of anticonvulsants. |
| M | May 15 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — Addition — Added an important clarification and citation about Nachemson’s famous flexion loading chart. |
| L | May 9 | Bone on Bone — First “draft” published as a blog post (actually it was quite a polished members-only post, but also destined to be the introduction to this longer article). |
| L | May 5 | Chronic Pain as a Conditioned Behaviour — Added a substantial new review of the science and plausibility of conditioned pain, especially regarding a new experiment by Kang et al. |
| S | May 4 | 38 Surprising Causes of Pain — Added another good example of early onset Parkinson’s that looked like typical sports injuries. |
| L | May 2 | The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome — New sub-topic, patellofemoral joint replacement — Added a substantial discussion of patellofemoral joint replacement, and made a number of other modest improvements to the surgery chapter. |
| L | Apr 17 | Whole Body Cryotherapy for Pain — New section: “Ice baths for performance? No!” |
| L | Apr 16 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — New chapter. |
| L | Apr 15 | Water Fever and the Fear of Chronic Dehydration — New section: “Dehydration itself may be less potent than fearing it.” |
| S | Apr 14 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — Added exercise advice — Oddly, the summary of all treatment recommendations chapter had nothing to say about exercise until now. Better late than never! |
| L | Apr 14 | Achilles Tendinitis Treatment Science — New section: “Treating calcific Achilles tendinitis with surgery.” |
| S | Apr 13 | The Trouble with Chairs — Science update. Added another new citation about the weekend warrior exercise pattern, and it’s another quite reassuring one (O’Donovan et al.). |
| L | Apr 13 | The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain — Substantial re-write, exercise chapter — I added a new section about the science of back exercise, based largely on a major new review (IJzelenberg) … and then kept going and significantly improved the whole chapter. |
| S | Apr 3 | The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome — Minor upgrades, patellofemoral joint pressure — After publishing part of this chapter as an excerpt, I made several minor improvements, and added one simple diagram. |
| M | Mar 27 | Whole Body Cryotherapy for Pain — Significant improvements to the safety section. Always a good section to improve. |
| S | Mar 22 | A Rational Guide to Fibromyalgia — Minor improvements, alcohol section — Added some reader comments, a footnote about neuroticism and alcohol, and did a little editing. |
The last 20 blog posts
Blog posts are smaller and more ephemeral than the articles in PainSci’s main library. I blog about many topics as I work on books and permanent articles. There are 1190 posts dating back to 2010.
- Blog pause for Covid recovery & post stockpiling » Oct 5, 24
- Plug your sodium channels with VX-548 » Sep 30, 24
- Trigger points debate greatly delayed (Member Post) 🔈 » Sep 27, 24
- Reciprocal inhibition invalidated (15 years ago) » Sep 25, 24
- Is junk food exhausting? » Sep 23, 24
- Blood-starved kneecaps » Sep 18, 24
- The rhythm of throbbing pain » Sep 16, 24
- Exercise for arthritis is underwhelming » Sep 11, 24
- Magnesium supplementation as a pain killer 🔈 » Sep 6, 24
- Six hours work for one citation » Sep 4, 24
- A new placebo analgesia review » Sep 3, 24
- Plentiful potent PEMF prevails (defying my cynical prediction) 🔈 » Aug 27, 24
- Shocking shockwave defeat » Aug 21, 24
- Inflamed planet: do chemicals explain some pain? (Member Post) 🔈 » Aug 19, 24
- The physical activity paradox » Aug 16, 24
- Sleeping on the floor is not like getting an 8-hour massage » Aug 11, 24
- An allergy to … meat?! » Aug 10, 24
- Common lung dysfunction makes people weaker » Aug 7, 24
- Germ theory denialism is the flat Earth of biology 🔈 » Aug 1, 24
- The trouble with demonizing trivial physical stresses 🔈 » Jul 26, 24
The last 20 bibliography items with beefier summaries
Many scientific papers added to the bibliography are boring and utilitarian, but some are much more interesting, like small blog posts about the science — like the recent highlights are listed here. The are roughly 4000 more items in the whole bibliography, ~750 of them more substantively annotated.
- The effect of progressive and individualised sport-specific training on the prevalence of injury in football and handball student athletes: a randomised controlled trial. Hagum et al., 2023, Front Sports Act Living. » added Oct 2024
- Pain neuroscience education is not superior to spinal physiology and ergonomics education within a short multidisciplinary rehabilitation program: A randomized controlled trial. Adenis et al., 2024, Musculoskelet Sci Pract. » added Sep 2024
- Antagonist muscle activity during stretching: a paradox re-assessed. Etnyre et al., 1988, Med Sci Sports Exerc. » added Sep 2024
- Does throbbing pain have a brain signature? Mo et al., 2013, Pain. » added Sep 2024
- Neurophysiological reflex mechanisms' lack of contribution to the success of PNF stretches. Mitchell et al., 2009, J Sport Rehabil. » added Sep 2024
- Placebo analgesia in physical and psychological interventions: Systematic review and meta-analysis of three-armed trials. Hohenschurz-Schmidt et al., 2024, Eur J Pain. » added Sep 2024
- Physical activity paradox: providing evidence-based guidance while closing research gaps. Pronk et al., 2024, Br J Sports Med. » added Aug 2024
- The impact of stressful life events on centralized pain and pain intensity: A combined model examining the mediating roles of anger and perceived injustice among racially minoritized adults with chronic pain. Jin et al., 2024, J Pain. » added Aug 2024
- Is radial extracorporeal shock wave therapy (rESWT), sham-rESWT or a standardised exercise programme in combination with advice plus customised foot orthoses more effective than advice plus customised foot orthoses alone in the treatment of plantar fasciopathy? A double-blind, randomised, sham-controlled trial. Heide et al., 2024, Br J Sports Med. » added Aug 2024
- Long distance running and knee osteoarthritis. A prospective study. Chakravarty et al., 2008, Am J Prev Med. » added Jul 2024
- DMSO induces drastic changes in human cellular processes and epigenetic landscape in vitro. Verheijen et al., 2019, Sci Rep. » added Jun 2024
- DMSO Represses Inflammatory Cytokine Production from Human Blood Cells and Reduces Autoimmune Arthritis. Elisia et al., 2016, PLoS One. » added Jun 2024
- Efficacy of prescribed opioids for acute pain after being discharged from the emergency department: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Daoust et al., 2023, Acad Emerg Med. » added Jun 2024
- Physician Empathy and Chronic Pain Outcomes. Licciardone et al., 2024, JAMA Netw Open. » added Jun 2024
- Novel approach towards musculoskeletal phenotypes. Meisingset et al., 2020, Eur J Pain. » added Jun 2024
- {Order Effects on the Rubber Hand Illusion Expectancy: A Replication and Extension of Lush (2020)}. Tsuji et al., 2024, Collabra: Psychology. » added May 2024
- Recovery trajectories in common musculoskeletal complaints by diagnosis contra prognostic phenotypes. Aasdahl et al., 2021, BMC Musculoskelet Disord. » added Apr 2024
- Trajectories of disability in low back pain. Andersen et al., 2022, Pain Rep. » added Apr 2024
- Don't be a nocebo! Why healthcare organizations should value patients' expectations. Poulter et al., 2024, Frontiers in Psychology. » added Apr 2024
- Ultrasound guided lavage with corticosteroid injection versus sham lavage with and without corticosteroid injection for calcific tendinopathy of shoulder: randomised double blinded multi-arm study. Moosmayer et al., 2023, BMJ. » added Mar 2024
What’s new on this page about new stuff?
Ironically, I’ve actually updated this page quite a few times without logging the change. 😜
2023 — An update to the updates page?! It’s so meta! It’s not going to happen often, but I just finished improving the whole update-logging system in several ways. Most of the upgrades are "under the hood," but there is now much better filtering for the update list, and the foundations have been laid for more improvements in the future.
2016 — Publication.