Not too long ago The New York Times ran an article proposing a positive side of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It featured the US Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program, an ambitious application of positive psychology initiated by BG (Ret) Cornam with guidance from Dr. Martin Seligman. Basically, the idea is to train soldiers and … [Read more...]
Carpal tunnel syndrome: thinking outside the box (or wrist)
April 6, 2012 By 5 Comments
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common entrapment neuropathy and is caused by compression of the median nerve at the wrist. The classical neurological textbook will tell you that the symptoms caused by carpal tunnel syndrome are localised to the typical median nerve innervation territory in the hand, which involves the first three and half … [Read more...]
Healing Hands MIRAGEs and illusions
March 30, 2012 By 12 Comments
Around this time last year, our research at The University of Nottingham unexpectedly stumbled into the media spotlight: “Mind tricks may help arthritic pain; Illusions can halve the pain of osteoarthritis” the headlines read. See the original BBC news article complete with video here. They were referring to our MIRAGE multisensory … [Read more...]
It’s Time to Quit Fooling ourselves…It’s time to Move Forward in the Treatment of Pain
March 2, 2012 By 15 Comments
The education within the field of Physical Therapy profession is rapidly changing. From the entry-level doctorate to residency and fellowship programs, the degree of education for clinicians is far greater than that of those who graduated years ago. But despite this increase in education, there appears to be a large divide when arriving at a common … [Read more...]
My back has shrunk – The influence of cupping therapy on body image
February 28, 2012 By 10 Comments
My Ph.D. research investigated the effect of cupping therapy in the treatment of chronic non-specific neck pain [1-3]. Besides pain and well-being we followed the approach by Moseley, 2008 [4] who found that patients with chronic low back pain showed body image distortions. His patients were unable to designate their whole bodily contours and there … [Read more...]
Media Release: Ride to raise awareness for chronic pain
February 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Adelaide’s recreational cyclists are being urged to help raise awareness about chronic pain by joining the University of South Australia’s Ride for Pain on Sunday April 29. The ride, which includes an option for cyclists to conquer the notoriously painful Corkscrew Road in the Adelaide Hills, is the brainchild of UniSA’s Professor of … [Read more...]
The role of Range of Motion in recovery from Whiplash Associated Disorders
February 21, 2012 By 1 Comment
Summary My PhD research investigated the role of cervical spine Range of Motion in the recovery from Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD). This formed part of my work on a large RCT investigating conservative treatments for WAD [2]. In clinical practice, Health Care Professionals attach value to measurements of cervical spine Range of Motion … [Read more...]
The moral hazard of whiplash
January 31, 2012 By 17 Comments
A whole edition of Spine was recently dedicated to whiplash associated disorders (WAD) (Vol 36 Number 25S). One paper by Cote and Soklaridis (1) caught my attention. They warn that health professionals should be aware of the danger of iatrogenesis during the early stages of WAD. According to Wikipedia the term iatrogenesis means brought forth by a … [Read more...]
More on body awareness and chronic pain
January 27, 2012 By 16 Comments
Evidence has been accumulating that shows that people with chronic pain have modifications in body awareness. For example patients suffering from CRPS express feelings of foreignness towards their painful body part, distorted sense of size and shape, and difficulty determining the position of the affected limb (e.g., Lewis, Kersten, McCabe, … [Read more...]
The development of the Canadian Physiotherapy Pain Science Division
January 24, 2012 By 6 Comments
The Pain Science Division (PSD) of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association (CPA) was founded in 2008, through the dedicated work of a small group of Canadian PTs. Diane Jacobs brought Dave Walton, Nick Matheson, Sebastian Asselbergs, Eric Matheson and me together, initially forming the Canadian Physiotherapy Pain Science Group(CPPSG). In 2005 we … [Read more...]
Maltreated children show same pattern of brain activity as combat soldiers
January 20, 2012 By 1 Comment
We have recently found that children exposed to family violence show the same pattern of activity in their brains as soldiers exposed to combat. This study, which can be downloaded from the journal Current Biology, included 43 children scanned using an fMRI scanner. 20 children who had been exposed to documented violence at home were compared with … [Read more...]
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