What better study to show the power of negative thinking (catastrophizing) and how it can contribute to chronic pain than looking at people who have had a whole knee joint replaced but continue to have pain afterwards. If you take out a damaged joint and it’s the cause of pain, the pain should go away. […]
New 2020 research study looked at 220 asymptomatic knees with MRI scans. What they found just adds more evidence to what we already know: structural ‘abnormalities’ do not cause pain in a lot of people. Here’s the conclusion in the author’s words: “Nearly all knees of asymptomatic adults showed abnormalities in at least one knee […]
In addressing chronic pain, we need to address the brain, not just the body. Scientific studies are pointing to that. Here’s a few quotes from this 2019 review research paper. “Several studies have investigated the brain areas associated with emotional aspects of pain. Baliki et al. showed that patients with persistent back pain had greater […]
2019 study looking 1000 people with shoulder pain in the UK found that it is your BELIEF (self-efficacy) that determines if physiotherapy is successful or not. The most important predictor of outcome was the person’s pain and disability at the first appointment. Most of these people still had pain and disability 6 months later. The […]
Dr. Sarno was a pioneer M.D. who found the link between repressed emotions and physical symptoms. I find emotions really interesting as we know so many people have learned to suppress and repress uncomfortable emotions from an early age on. I think this is one of the biggest and least talked about things, and especially […]
Psychosocial factors play a big part in ongoing chronic pain, though you don’t have that many doctors asking patients about these things. Working with people in pain for over 20 years, you hear all sorts of stories and histories. Asking the right questions and looking at the whole person and their life history is so […]
One of the least talked about things in the medical community is how emotions play a role in somatic symptoms. Many of these bodily symptoms don’t have a physical or structural cause. This study was review study looking at 64 studies from 1985 to 2018. It pools all the data from many studies so we […]
A little article in TIME magazine to remind us that our emotions have the capacity to create physical symptoms in the body. If you have ruled out structural and organic causes with your physical symptoms, one of the next steps would be to look at how you deal with your emotions. Chronic pain and other […]
This study published June 7, 2019 was a systematic review looking at multiple studies and the role of emotions in somatic (bodily) symptoms. This is the first review to look at the combination of results in 64 studies over the years. The results show a link between emotion regulation and somatic body symptoms. This is […]
How common are getting X-ray and MRI’s of your back? How about a brain MRI? Well, one day hopefully we will include brain MRI’s with acute low back pain. Why? Because certain brain activation patterns predict with 85% accuracy who will still have pain a year later. This shows us 2 things: 1) who could […]
