Pain science is a very loaded topic, that is impossible to cover in a single post. That being said, I would like to introduce a vital topic affecting healthcare and society as a whole. Pain, particularly chronic pain, greatly impacts health, financial, social, and psychological well being. Dr. John Rusin had an interesting Facebook post regarding pain, diagnoses, healthcare, and potentially harmful words. Warning, some adult language in his post!
Unfortunately, this type of damaging behavior is all too common in the healthcare field. Mobility is one of the most powerful interventions we have in the healthcare world. With the exception of certain medical contraindications, movement needs to be promoted with nearly all of our clients. Pushing immobility and reinforcing movement as damaging likely adds to the chronic pain epidemic.
Fortunately, pain science (also known as therapeutic pain neuroscience among other terms) makes us rethink the way we talk to our patients. Conversations need to stop or prevent self limiting beliefs regarding pain from being formed and encourage mobility. In order to do this clinicians need to better understand how pain works and translate this understanding to our patients. This alone can help our patients get better. By incorporating this education to the techniques we already do can make them more powerful. Finally, using updated models of pain, novel treatment techniques like mirror therapy or graded motor imagery can become treatment options for appropriate patients.
First, we need to understand pain a little better. I will leave the nuts and bolts of this to Lorimer Moseley, a leading researcher in pain science. In addition to the video, I will also provide this link to a free research article of his. While these are both great resources, I really recommend checking out the video because he is pretty funny (it is only 15 minutes!).
Hope this helps,
Steve
Clinicians for Wellness 