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 40 articles & books in 167 days, breaking down into 19 major updates, 24 medium, 17 minor. That’s every 2.8 days in recent history; there have been 1794 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 | Jan 29 | What Works for Chronic Pain? — Added a new section: “‘Prehab’ works (for preventing pain after surgery).” |
S | Jan 28 | Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements for Pain & Healing — Refinements to the discussion of indirect harms. That section is now called: “6 ways being a sucker for supplements can go wrong.” |
L | Jan 24 | Most Pain Treatments Damned With Faint Praise — A rare update to this old article, acknowledging that I may have been too dismissive of small effect sizes over the years. See the new section, “Give small a chance.” |
M | Jan 23 | Masking Pain is Under-Rated — General editing and improvements. |
S | Jan 22 | The Power of Barking: Correlation, causation, and how we decide what treatments work — Some light editing and revision. Started to nude this article in the direction of becoming a more general guide to all the ways that we can get fooled into thinking a treatment is helping when it actually isn’t. |
M | Jan 22 | Chronic Pain as a Conditioned Behaviour — Added a significant citation to Madden, a 2017 study that I’d somehow missed. There’s now a substantial new footnote about that one. Also added a point about the general difficulty with experimentally reproducing conditioned pain. |
S | Jan 18 | Placebo Power Hype — Miscellaneous minor improvements to the section, “Placebo for sale! Is it okay to pay for a placebo?” |
M | Jan 14 | Does Acupuncture Work for Pain? — Substantive update to evidence of serious publication bias for acupuncture research in China. See an entire new section tucked into a footnote: “Does China only publish good science news about acupuncture?” |
M | Jan 11 | Heat for Pain and Rehab — Two small new sections, “Comfort vs analgesia” and “Heating time: how long does it take?” There’s actually more new content tucked away in a footnote about Bartholdy et al. on heated mittens. |
L | Jan 7 | What Happened To My Barber? — New section, “An activator incident: can a light tap injure the neck?” |
S | Dec 20 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Added a new citation to the shockwave evidence highlights, plus some older ones. |
L | Dec 15 | Tissue Provocation Therapies in Musculoskeletal Medicine — Substantial revision and expansion. |
L | Dec 13 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Major expansion of “Adding injury to injury: shockwave therapy’s big idea.” This nerdy new members-only section roughly doubled in size over the last couple days of writing and revision, and now most notably includes a much more complete discussion of the biological effects of shockwave therapy. |
M | Dec 11 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Several improvements to the review of clinical studies of shockwave therapy. More still coming. |
L | Dec 10 | Complete Guide to Plantar Fasciitis — Science update, shockwave therapy — A small but important update: new good quality negative evidence. Sigh. |
M | Dec 8 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Science update: several citations about shockwave for erectile dysfunction (just one line in the article, but the footnotes are practically a mini-article unto themselves). |
S | Dec 6 | Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements for Pain & Healing — Minor science updates and additions about creatine. |
S | Dec 6 | The Insomnia Guide for Chronic Pain Patients — Added a little more about creatine and it’s potential to treat sleep deprivation. |
S | Dec 3 | Trigger Points on Trial — Minor editing for clarity and currency. |
S | Dec 3 | How to Treat Sciatic Nerve Pain — Added a comprehensive list of the major diagnostic possibilities. |
S | Dec 3 | Does Epsom Salt Work? — Added sidebar, strange magnesium claims — Added a sidebar for colour and whimsy: “Weird health claims about magnesium.” |
M | Dec 1 | 14 Kinds of Bogus Citations — I finally added “The Zombie.” Better late than never! |
L | Nov 30 | Achilles Tendinitis Treatment Science — Substantial science update and general upgrade to the topical glyceryl trinitrate section. |
M | Nov 30 | Salamander and Regeneration Science — New section, “Every therapy in the rehab business thinks its ‘regenerative’.” |
S | Nov 26 | What Happened To My Barber? — Added a good quality diagram of artery dissection. |
M | Nov 26 | Alternative Medicine’s Choice — Added a significant sidebar, “The epic double-standards for mainstream and alternative medicine.” |
M | Nov 23 | The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain — More content, dry needling — Added a substantial new sub-section, “Overestimating success rates for dry needling,” which explores the way clinicians are mostly unaware of their substantial failures with dry needling. |
L | Nov 22 | Alternative Medicine’s Choice — Improved a section I added a while back and forgot to log: “Alternative medicine: hung up on pseudoscience and anti-science.” |
L | Nov 19 | Cramps, Spasms, Tremors & Twitches — Added a new section about the instructive extreme of the spasticity of rabies infections — a disease that literally kills with cramps. |
M | Nov 15 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — New content, exercise is anti-inflammatory — Added a more general summary of the case for exercise being “anti-inflammatory. |
M | Nov 15 | Chronic, Subtle, Systemic Inflammation — Science update, treatment — Updates, clarifications, and additions based on new evidence. |
M | Nov 14 | Strength Training for Pain & Injury Rehab — Added many photos of “women who lift heavy things.” |
M | Nov 14 | Chronic Pain and Inequality — More detailed section about the myth of women's fragility, and the risks of pelvic organ prolapse with heavy lifting, plus a substantial footnote about going “beyond kegels” to build strength to prevent POP. |
M | Nov 11 | Complete Guide to Frozen Shoulder — Science updated, steroids section — Added an encouraging anecdote about steroids working really well for frozen shoulder, and a section about the huge GRASP trial of steroids vs. exercise (not for frozen shoulder, but still relevant). |
L | Nov 9 | Does Hip Strengthening Work for IT Band Syndrome? — A long overdue update to this topic, but … I was waiting for worthwhile science. It finally arrived (Leppänen) and it challenges my bias quite effectively. But it’s still just one study. |
M | Nov 9 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Improvements to the section, “Adding injury to injury: shockwave therapy’s big idea.” |
M | Nov 7 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Continued improvements to shockwave content. Today I added more detail about shockwave’s ability to cause microtrauma and break up calcifications. |
L | Nov 5 | Vibration Therapies, from Massage Guns to Jacuzzis — Added new section, “The shockwave evidence,” which isn’t great and reflects poorly on the even weaker evidence for massage guns. |
L | Nov 5 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — More extensive changes and reorganization, with substantial upgrades to all the information about shockwave therapy. |
S | Nov 1 | The Pressure Question in Massage Therapy — Enriched the intro with a little “deeper” perspective on the appeal of deep tissue massage. |
M | Oct 30 | Does Ultrasound or Shockwave Therapy Work? — Minor but widespread improvements, and some science updates. Shockwave therapy is becoming a more prominent part of the article as it replaces low-intensity ultrasound in the marketplace. |
M | Oct 27 | The Insomnia Guide for Chronic Pain Patients — Science update. Added more nuanced information about creatine. Does it compensate for the effects of the sleep deprivation it causes? |
L | Oct 26 | Strength Training for Pain & Injury Rehab — Added sub-topic, “Weightlifting as medicine for pain and injury.” This article has always mostly been about the systemic, anti-aging, and injury prevention benefits of resistance training. To the extent that it discussed resistance training as a rehab tool, it was mostly to push back against the dominent physical therapy paradigm of “corrective” strength training intended to address perceived biomechanical deficiencies. Despite that problem, resistance training probably is directly analgesic and/or therapeutic — and that optimistic perspective has now been added to the article, finally. And there’s a bunch more coming. |
L | Oct 25 | Tennis Elbow Guide — Added a “story about pain relief from doing the most painful thing,” which was just simple strength training. |
M | Oct 23 | Complete Guide to Frozen Shoulder — Added — A new entry for the hall of treatment shame: “Tok sen massage (hammer-and-wedge, from an extremely popular internet video).” |
L | Oct 22 | The Chiropractic Controversies — Added a section, “But is it chiropractic? Hammering home the profession’s PR challenges.” This is similar to the recent blog post, but with significant revisions and additions. I also updated the “chiropractors are not trusted” citation at the top of the article — still the same statistic after almost 20 years (and probably much longer). |
L | Oct 21 | Placebo Power Hype — Added a section about therapy theatre. |
S | Oct 16 | Psoas, So What? — Science update: added a minor but interesting citation about the role of iliopsoas in sprinting. |
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 or Shockwave 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. |
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 1221 posts dating back to 2010.
- Is Chinese acupuncture research more like propaganda than science? 🔈 » Jan 31, 25
- 6 ways being a sucker for supplements can go wrong » Jan 28, 25
- Conditional trust in science (and the condition is "must agree with me") » Jan 28, 25
- Plenty of disagreement, not much “arguing” » Jan 28, 25
- “Old news” comments » Jan 23, 25
- Arithmetic + exercise = better rehab? » Jan 22, 25
- Can we adapt to painful things? » Jan 22, 25
- High-level acupuncture summary » Jan 22, 25
- Is it okay to pay for a placebo? » Jan 17, 25
- Does bending and lifting cause disc herniations? » Jan 16, 25
- Hot hands: a surprising test of powered mittens for arthritis » Jan 10, 25
- An activator incident: can a light tap injure the neck? 🔈 » Jan 7, 25
- Why those positive studies aren’t good enough 🔈 » Jan 3, 25
- STUDY: Contradictory new data on nitroglycerin for tendinitis 🔈 » Dec 18, 24
- Adding injury to injury: shockwave therapy’s big idea (Member Post) 🔈 » Dec 13, 24
- Not everyone can exercise » Dec 12, 24
- Goodbye and good riddance, Google Analytics » Dec 6, 24
- Can creatine treat its own insomnia side effect? » Dec 5, 24
- Weird health claims about magnesium » Dec 3, 24
- Shockwave therapy: ultrasound reborn! 🔈 » Nov 30, 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, ~800 of them more substantively annotated.
- Assessment of the degree of pelvic tilt within a normal asymptomatic population. Herrington et al., 2011, Man Ther. » added Jan 2025
- Classical Conditioning Fails to Elicit Allodynia in an Experimental Study with Healthy Humans. Madden et al., 2017, Pain Med. » added Jan 2025
- Does shockwave therapy lead to better pain and function than sham over 12 weeks in people with insertional Achilles tendinopathy? A randomised controlled trial. Alsulaimani et al., 2024, Clin Rehabil. » added Dec 2024
- 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 et al., 2024, Br J Sports Med. » added Nov 2024
- The Effects of Shock Wave Therapy on the Symptoms and Function of Individuals With Dupuytren Disease: A Systematic Review. Yazdani et al., 2024, Arch Phys Med Rehabil. » added Oct 2024
- 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
- Heavy Slow Resistance Versus Eccentric Training as Treatment for Achilles Tendinopathy: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Beyer et al., 2015, Am J Sports Med. » added Oct 2024
- The anti-inflammatory effect of exercise: its role in diabetes and cardiovascular disease control. Pedersen et al., 2006, Essays Biochem. » added Oct 2024
- Impaired hemodynamics of the patella in patients with patellofemoral pain: A case-control study. Ophey et al., 2024, J Exp Orthop. » added Sep 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
- Effects of exercise therapy in axial spondyloarthritis: A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of randomized trials. Zhang et al., 2024, Arch Phys Med Rehabil. » 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
- Physical activity paradox: providing evidence-based guidance while closing research gaps. Pronk et al., 2024, Br J Sports Med. » 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
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.