Researchers at Penn State University have found that emotions themselves can act as stressors to create inflammation and pain in the body. In this study they found a link between emotions and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). “We often think of emotion as a consequence of stress or pain, but our findings suggest that under certain circumstances […]
One of the things to closely look at with chronic pain and chronic health issues are emotions. As I have talked about before, the definition of pain is an ‘unpleasant sensory and emotional experience’. The longer pain goes on without healing or when pain occurs with no physical trauma, we need to look less at […]
One of the most important things I look at with people in chronic pain is their emotion regulation style. Remember the definition if pain is a “sensory and emotional experience.” The more chronic the pain or pain that came on without a physical injury or around a time of elevated stress is likely to have […]
The power of fake knee injections is real and lasting in people with knee osteoarthritis(OA). See study link below. What is this? It’s called the placebo, but it’s really the power of your mind. It is your expectations and beliefs. You can harness new expectations and beliefs right now for healing without being tricked by […]
People have this belief that running is bad for their knees. And especially for knees with osteoarthritis. Well this systematic review of more than 1200 people over the age of 50 puts this belief to bed. Here is a snippet from the authors below: “Contrary to what we expected, we found little evidence to suggest […]
2020 study that looked at the association of MRI findings and long-term disability in chronic low back pain patients over a 13 year period. The goal was to assess whether long-term disability is associated with baseline degenerative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in patients with low back pain (LBP). Guess what? It’s not. We know […]
One of the biggest issues with chronic pain and other chronic health ailments is that the sympathethic fight or flight nervous system is commonly in overdrive. We need to learn to activate the parasympathetic rest and digest branch of the nervous system for healing. I’m including a handout here that gives some perspective on how […]
This was a systematic review for Acute low back pain. Basically nothing was shown to be better than the other. What it tells me is the body heals by itself, not by a certain treatment. We just need to realize that and carry on as normally as we can and give ourselves time to heal. […]
Stress affects us in so many ways physically. Mental and emotional stress can be invisible to us as stress itself but it’s clearly visible in the body as physical health symptoms. This is the most common way stress presents itself. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. estimates that stress accounts for […]
New study out- randomized clinical trial for chronic low back. The placebo in this study was a cold laser machine that wasn’t even turned on!!! More evidence to show chronic pain is more likely influenced by changes in the brain and nervous system vs acute pain where there are typical changes from tissue injury. We […]
