Cellular Senescence in Disc Degeneration
The better understanding developed in recent years of the harmful effects of lingering senescent cells in the tissues of older individuals has led to a burst of research into cellular senescence in many areas of medicine. One of the more active parts of the field of late, judging by number of publications, is degenerative disc disease. Therapies that can efficiently remove senescent cells may well turn out to greatly slow the widespread age-related dysfunction observed in intevertebral disc tissue.
Closely associated with aging and age-related disorders, cellular senescence is the inability of cells to proliferate...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 1, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Why I ’ m not fazed by unremarkable results in therapy trials
Remember the old ‘pareto principle’? 80% of the results come from 20% of the input, or as Wikipedia informs me, “the principle of factor sparsity”
I think we’ve got there with musculoskeletal pain, especially low back pain.
The other ‘law’ that might apply is that of diminishing returns.
We’ve learned a great deal about low back pain over my clinical career. We’ve essentially learned what not do to. In the name of progress, thousands of people have put their pain (their bodies) on the line. And progress has not exactly been great right? We’ve learned tha...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - May 7, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Back pain Low back pain Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Professional topics Research Science in practice healthcare Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
‘ Women ’ s pain ’ – not just ‘ women ’ s pain ’
Women really do get a rough deal when it comes to pain. We live with the myth that because women experience pain in childbirth and (often) with periods of course women can ‘deal with it.’
Until recently women and female animals haven’t been included in pain research, and guess what? Women and female animals don’t have the same biological system for processing nociception.
Men are told ‘don’t be a girl’ about their pain.
Women are told they ‘look too good’ to be experiencing pain.
Women don’t get taken seriously when they ask for help with their pain &#...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 20, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Pain Pain conditions Chronic pain gender gender disparity Health healthcare Research sex women Source Type: blogs
A Book, A Desk, A Lamp: My 3 Best Investments From Last Year
Last year I made three purchases that changed my life for the better. They weren't flashy or expensive items or even stocks for that matter, but they have given me the tools to become more balanced and achieve a greater wellbeing. Up until that point, I was constantly running on fumes trying to balance between my classes, labs, study, work, life...you get the gist. And while my book, desk, and lamp weren't miraculous cures for my chaotic lifestyle, each item helped me to create more structure in my days and build meaningful habits that improved my wellbeing in countless ways. From a self-help book providing wisdom on how t...
Source: PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement - April 6, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Pripat16 Tags: career creativity featured philosophy productivity tips self-improvement Source Type: blogs
What do people want from pain management?
The short answer is often “take my pain away” – and we’d be foolish to ignore the impact of pain intensity on distress and disability. At the same time there’s more than enough research showing that if treatment only emphasises pain intensity (1) it may not be achievable for many, especially if we take into account the small effect sizes on pain intensity from exercise, medications and psychological therapies; and (2) even if pain is reduced, it may not translate into improvements in daily life.
The slightly more complex answer lies behind the desire to “take my pain away.” We n...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 19, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Research Science in practice Occupational therapy pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
N of 1 studies – great examples
This study examined whether it’s more fruitful to expose people to many activities they’ve previously avoided, or instead, to limit the number of activities each person was exposed to. This is SUCH an important component of therapy where people have avoided doing things that bother them because they anticipate either that their pain will go to untolerable levels (or interfere with other important things like sleep) or because they’re worried they’ll do harm to themselves. Why? Because doing things in one safe space is not life. We do lots of activities in lots of different spaces, and most of them a...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 12, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Low back pain Research Science in practice pain management single case experimental design Source Type: blogs
If a rose is a rose by any other name, how should we study treatment processes in pain management & rehabilitation?
A new instalment in my series about intensive longitudinal studies, aka ecological momentary assessment (and a host of other names for methods used to study daily life in real time in the real world).
Daily life is the focus of occupational therapy – doing what needs to be done, or a person wants to do, in everyday life. It’s complex because unlike a laboratory (or a large, well-controlled randomised controlled trial) daily life is messy and there is no way to control all the interacting factors that influence why a person does what they do. A technical term for the processes involved is microtemporality, o...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - January 29, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Assessment Clinical reasoning Professional topics Research Science in practice intensive longitudinal research Occupational therapy Pain rehabilitation research methods single case experimental design Source Type: blogs
What ’ s the relationship between pain intensity and functional limitations?
This question comes up from time to time as some commentators strive to “find the cause and fix the problem at all cost.” The argument is that if pain was gone, the person would simply return to their old life just as they were. And for what it’s worth, there’s certainly a relationship between pain intensity and disability, and pain intensity and distress – but it’s not simple.
One of the earliest papers I read when I was beginning my pain management career is one by Waddell, Main, Morris, Di Paola & Gray (1984). Gordon Waddell was an orthopaedic surgeon with an interest ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - January 15, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Pain Research Science in practice biopsychosocial Clinical reasoning pain management Source Type: blogs
Persistent pain and movement practices
Here I go, stepping into “the bio” to write about movement. Oh dear, what am I doing?
Movement practices of various kinds are part and parcel of pain management. In fact, to read some of the material in social media-land, exercise is the be-all and end-all of pain management, maybe with a dash of psychology. Can we please stop doing this?
I’ve said it often, for many forms of persistent pain, especially the most common forms – nonspecific chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritic pain – movement is a good thing, but the effect sizes are small for both pain intensity and d...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 18, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Low back pain Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Psychology Resilience/Health Science in practice movement optimism movement practices pain management Research Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
How much “ pain ed ” do people need? And what to do when someone is not convinced …
This post has been a long time coming. There’s no doubt that giving explanations about pain mechanisms is common, and that we’ve (health professionals) been doing it a looooong time. Yes, way back to the 1970’s! In the early 1980’s when I started working in this field it was already commonplace to offer people an explanation for chronic pain (and to explain why some pains are such pains, while others bother us less – even when they involve the same degree of nociceptive input). Of course, way back then we used Gate Control Theory (GCT) to explain the distinction between hurt and harm, to explo...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - November 27, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Education/CME Research Science in practice biopsychosocial Explain pain pain explanations PNE Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
What do occupational therapists add to pain management/rehabilitation?
Coming from a small profession that has side-stepped (more or less) a conventional biomedical model, I’ve found my inclusion in pain management and rehabilitation is not always easily understood by other clinicians. It doesn’t help that occupational therapists practice in very diverse settings, and what we do may look superficially like handing out raised toilet seats, playing with kids, doing work-site assessments or hand therapy!
Today I hope to remedy this a bit, and extend a challenge to clinicians from other professions to sum up what your profession adds in 25 words or less (the first sentence in this...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - October 16, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Professional topics Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
“ The social ” – a brief look at family
Our most important relationships, the ones we learn most from, probably occur in families (Bowlby, 1978). As kids, even before we begin to speak, we observe our family members – and there’s reasonable evidence showing that how well these early relationships develop influences our experience of pain and how we express it.
I had the occasion to read a little about adolescent and children’s pain, and the influence of parents on young people as they grow up. There’s a great deal of research interest in children’s pain because children with persistent pain grow up to be adults – usually al...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - September 11, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Assessment Back pain Chronic pain Low back pain Research Science in practice adolescents biopsychosocial family pain management partners spouse Source Type: blogs
The key to living with less pain is understanding what relieves pain, why it works, and how to achieve it
An excerpt from The Pain Solution: 5 Steps to Relieve and Prevent Back Pain, Muscle Pain, and Joint Pain without Medication. In a one-year period, more than 54 percent of Americans report musculoskeletal pain, including arthritis pain, low back pain, and neck pain. The search for relief has created a different kind of epidemic. The opioids
Read more…
The key to living with less pain is understanding what relieves pain, why it works, and how to achieve it originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 1, 2022 Category: General Medicine Authors: Saloni Sharma, MD Tags: Conditions Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Bonus Features – August 14, 2022 – Payers and providers look at Big Tech differently, half of physicians and nurses don ’ t think their orgs are headed in the right direction, and more
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
News and Studies
HIMSS has released its 2022 Future of Healthcare Report, and survey results suggest that payers and providers look at big technology companies differently. While 40% of health system leaders report “high c...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - August 14, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System 4medica Advata Amazon Healthcare AVIA Brian Marsella CCS Ceras Health Corrine Stroum COVID-19 Dayor Belizaire DeliverHealth Ellipsis Health Fathom Source Type: blogs
Ways to stop good clinicians leaving pain management (ii)
Last week I started a series of posts on how we can stop good clinicians leaving pain management. I began with funding because, at least in New Zealand, lack of funding is a significant part of the problem of staff retention.
Now I want to look at how we prepare clinicians to work in pain management.
One of the major barriers in New Zealand is the dominance of musculoskeletal rehabilitation in physiotherapy clinics around the country. How could direct access to musculoskeletal rehabilitation be a bad thing, you ask? Well, it’s mainly because pain management is not musculoskeletal rehabilitation – and yet...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - August 7, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Science in practice Health healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs
