The Pain PT News

Placebo and nocebo are real physiological effects generated by our brains. They have the power to turn symptoms on, up, or down. Past research has found our expectations (positive and negative) are the…

In the early 2000's, I started to think more deeply about chronic pain and other chronic symptoms that were not getting better through traditional physical therapy (physiotherapy). I was working in an…

I wanted to highlight how fear of movement because of a symptom (like pain) can generalize to other safe movements from the learning mechanisms in the brain. This is called avoidance generalization. This…

This was a nice review paper looking at how psychological trauma affects functional somatic symptoms (FSS) in the body. Functional means no specific identifiable medical cause is found in the body. What…

This 2017 study looked at the relationship between beliefs about emotions, emotional suppression, and the global impact it has on fibromyalgia patients. Fibromyalgia is one of the conditions that has its…

Chronic pain or chronic somatic symptoms are not the same as acute pain or acute somatic symptoms. Chronic symptoms are typically maladaptive and don't represent a true threat in the body (like an acute…

This was a nice study showing how having an insecure attachment to a parental figure from childhood becomes a risk factor to having medically unexplained somatic symptoms (MUSS) later in adulthood. The…

Many people believe the weather has an impact on their pain or arthritis symptoms. This was a great review study looking at exactly that. Titled "Come rain or shine: Is weather a risk factor for musculoskeletal…

There have been many studies linking the role of ACE's to chronic disease later in life. I wanted to share a 2023 study here that looked to identify a cut-point for the number of ACE's that would have…

One of the areas in chronic pain that's not as talked about is the role of identifying emotions and how the lack of knowing what you are feeling emotionally may emerge physically as somatic symptoms. Difficulty…

This 2023 review study found an association between anxiety and autoimmune disorders. In fact what the meta-analysis found was that individuals experiencing anxiety were 1.28 times more likely to develop…

Mind over matter? I found these two studies linked here very interesting as they show the power of the mind alone in affecting our health. I will talk about these in a moment. First I find it fascinating…

When I think of the brain's role in somatic symptoms, I think of three main outputs the brain can produce that will affect symptoms: 1) thoughts 2) emotions, and 3) behaviors. The brain is continually…

I want to review this new study that came out recently (May 2024) in the Clinical Journal of Pain. The results showed how we deal with emotions in real time can have an immediate effect on our pain experience.…

Let's look at a new 2024 research paper that reviewed and looked at the neuroscience data on the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in chronic pain. The authors "suggest an updated model…

Here'a a 2017 study from New York University that found "that chronic pain rewires circuits in a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to increase “aversion,” the amount of attention…

Anger is a primary emotion in all humans. How couples handle it during conflict can influence which health issues we are prone to getting, according to a 20 year study from UC Berkley and Northwestern…

One way to understand how the brain can create symptoms in the body is through fight, flight, freeze, fawn nervous system reactions. These stress or trauma reactions are real but they are protective in…

Wanted to touch on somatization again here as it's something that is a focus point of the work I do with people with chronic somatic symptoms. According to this research paper, "more than one-third of…