Chronic pelvic pain can be difficult to diagnose because the place where someone feels pain does not always reveal where that pain originates. It is generally defined as persistent or recurrent pain in the pelvic region lasting for several months. Definitions differ somewhat among medical organizations, but many use a
Your client is filling out your massage intake form and hesitates over the question about pregnancy. “I tested positive on a home pregnancy test this morning, but I don’t know how accurate the test is,” she tells you. “I’ll re-test in a couple of days to confirm if I’m really
An editorial in Nature Neuroscience argued that biological tests, such as brain scans and biomarkers, do not prove or disprove a person’s pain. However, a responding researcher said that doesn’t make biomarkers “futile or conceptually flawed.” Lead pain researcher Jan Vollert at the University of Exeter and 10 colleagues argued
Pain science has leaned on a familiar aphorism: Nociception is neither necessary nor sufficient for pain. The phrase typically appears in textbooks, lectures, and research papers, often used to explain why pain can exist without clear tissue damage. But according to pain researchers Asaf Weisman, Dr. Milton Cohen, and Dr.
For decades, fear-avoidance beliefs have played a central role in how clinicians and researchers understand chronic pain. When pain is interpreted as a sign of harm, people may avoid movement or activity, leading to physical deconditioning, emotional distress, and disability. This framework has shaped assessment tools, treatment approaches, and patient
An international group of researchers has developed a standardized dataset aimed at improving how pain researchers document social and structural factors that influence pain. The initiative, known as Identifying Social factors that Stratify Health Opportunities and Outcomes (ISSHOOs), outlines a core set of sociodemographic variables that pain studies should collect
The International Association of Pain Society (IASP) have introduced the term “nociplastic pain” in 2017 to describe chronic pain that does not fit into the other two existing pain descriptors: neuropathic and nociceptive. However, putting the new term into practice can be challenging since nociplastic pain does not have a
Researchers in a 2024 study of more than 15,300 patients with chronic low back pain found that patients’ pain drawings on a body chart “do not signify psychological distress.” Instead, they find that these drawings are more closely associated with physical symptoms, such as disability, pain duration, and pain intensity.
A team of international researchers found that exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness, and multidisciplinary care could reduce chronic low back pain and disability for one year or longer. Although these treatments have at least a moderate level of certainty, about 68% of the studies have a high risk of
Key takeaways University of Sydney researchers found one treatment (NSAIDs) to be effective at moderate-level certainty for acute low back pain Five treatments (exercise, spinal manipulation, taping, antidepressants, TRPV1 agonists) with statistically significant but small effects for chronic low back pain. All were compared to placebo. Some common treatments—like paracetamol,
Key takeaways: Prior plausibility: Evaluate how a claim aligns with established science. For example, “human energy fields” lack solid biological or physical foundations, making them low in plausibility—unlike massage’s impact on nervous and immune systems, which is far more plausible Methodology: Focus on the methods and results sections—they’re the least
Clinical equipoise means that clinicians and researchers honestly don’t know which treatment is better. Therefore, no researcher favors one treatment over another during the experiment design, which reduces the risk of bias. If one treatment is already known to be better, it would be unethical to give someone the inferior