A recent bibliometric review of journals with 'pain' in the title revealed 19 journals (Chi et al., 2025). There is no shortage of research being published in the area of pain - and not a gnat's chance of keeping up with all the papers published. Papers aren't only published in these 'pain'-oriented journals, they can be in many other journals.

Trust. A term we use to mean our belief in the reliability or truth of someone or something. An attitude or belief that involves allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to another; an expectation that another will act in a certain way even though we can't be sure. Trustworthiness is the inherent quality of being reliable, honest, and worthy of trust.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for pain is sometimes seen as just about 'giving up' on reducing pain. TL:DR ACT doesn't mean giving up How on earth can that be? Isn't it called ACT because it's about 'acceptance'? Let's unpack 'acceptance.' According to the Oxford Dictionary of Languages, acceptance means "the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered." If I look at…

I've been thinking about person-centredness and what this means in practice recently. Person-centred or patient-centred was first used by psychologist Carl Rogers in the 1970s, later aligned with a biopsychosocial approach espoused by psychiatrist George Engel. Two key ideas underpin person-centredness: (1) people should be seen not just in terms of their 'presenting problems', but as whole people with a full emotional, personal and social life outside of the clinical encounter…

When I read social media content about managing or treating pain, I get the feeling there's some sort of competition going on. Brand X therapy gets Y outcomes - yay! Brand A gets B outcomes - we win! Almost as if brand loyalty matters. If there were clearly better outcomes from Brand X, or better outcomes for some people from Brand A I might be willing to buy into this kind of dialogue.

verb: give (someone) the authority or power to do something. Power has several meanings: in legal terms, power means authority, so empowerment can mean authorisation. Power can mean the ability to control people or events, or the political control a person or group has in a country. It can mean strength, it can mean capacity, it can mean energy. To…

Mindfulness as a term comes with a lot of baggage. Mindfulness is given to many people with pain (see this from Harvard) and it can evoke a groan and a 'OMG' eye-roll from some. It's touted as a way to reduce pain and stress, and almost like a panacea for everything that ails us. Today I thought it was time to review some of the evidence for mindfulness, and discuss ways to introduce the practice without getting that eye-roll response!

Of course we want to reduce pain. Pain is unpleasant so why wouldn't we aim to 'get rid of it'? But let's dig a little more deeply. We want to reduce pain to 'get back to normal', to reduce distress and to reduce disability or interference. If we successfully reduce pain it seems reasonable that both distress and disability will also have less impact.

On this blog I've pointed out the rather mediocre effects of most (perhaps all) treatments for chronic pain. It's incredibly sad for people living with pain to be promised The Thing, go through the rollercoaster of hope and end up with very little change. This internal disappointment is compounded by the pressure from external sources (family, friends, employers, treatment funders) who fully expect that The Thing Works.

Do you know why people with pain stop (or never get going with) movement practices? Apart from the 'but it's sooooo boring and hard', that is... (or is that just me?) Flare-ups. Increased pain. DOMs that last for ages - weeks for me! And a bunch of other factors (see Gilyani et al., 2024 for more for people with low back pain).

I've recently discovered a researcher I'd not heard of before but thanks to Michael Ray, a colleague in the US, I've come across Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk from University at Buffalo, New York. Hanna is a medical sociologist who has been researching the NIH-funded “Demography of Chronic Pain: A Population Approach to Pain Trends, Pain Disparities, and Pain-Related Disability and Death” (R01 AG065351; 2020-2025), and co-authored the study that sparked this blog (see below).

Pacing is one of the more divisive terms among clinicians and people living with pain. It's either the best thing since sliced bread - or the worst thing in the world. Let's define it, because some of the problems might start here. Pacing may be defined as a strategy to modify over- and under-activity, and to work at a steady and consistent level.

I'm guilty. I've posted over 1300 posts on this blog, and I know I'm guilty of doing two out of three, and failed to do the third. The two I've done a lot? What and why. What the evidence suggests and what could help people with pain and the clinicians they see. I've written about why these ideas might help and…

Something I teach and bring to my research reading is the 'so what' question. So what is about bringing home the implications, the rationale, the WHY in all that I do. I'm reflecting on this as I consider my blog. When I started writing in 2007, I wanted to get information out to people just tiptoeing into pain practice and who might not have access to research.

Recently I've been pondering internalised ableism. This term refers to adopting common societal beliefs about 'normal' and the converse 'abnormal', and consequently judging themselves in light of those norms. It can include expectations and attitudes like shame for being disabled, comparing yourself with 'normal' people and being incredibly critical of your own capabilities and limitations as a result. Much of the literature on this topic focuses on autism spectrum and ADHD, and mental health, but there are few papers in the chronic pain space such as Sheppard (2020).

Over the years I've worked clinically I've noticed that many people with pain have had ongoing rehab. Like almost never-ending. One programme after another. In some cases this has gone on for years. A new goal is set as soon as an old goal is reached. And on and on. While sometimes this endless rehab has been initiated by the individual, more often than not in a compensation setting it's been at the behest of the insurer.

Someone on social media suggested we rename menopause, and I love this idea! Life after women stop having periods is more than 'Oh now you can't have babies' so I suggested Ovation! As I've been posting recently here and here menopause and life after menopause is often associated with more musculoskeletal pain, so I thought it time to look at what clinicians might consider.

As a young woman growing up in a small town in New Zealand, my educational and career choices were somewhat constrained. Not for me the push to become a medical practitioner, a lawyer, a scientist. No, I was encouraged to consider nursing or teaching. The subjects available to me did not include metalworking, woodworking, technical drawing (that was for boys, until my friend Tania challenged it!).

Once a woman (or person with female sex hormones) reaches menopause, things change. I experienced the usual rush of hot flushes, brain fog (later found to be previously undiagnosed ADHD - and responsive to methyphenidate - yay!) and an array of other symptoms like night sweats, sleep problems, wrinkled skin, and lost libido. Every person who menstruates will, if they live long enough, stop menstruating.

The Acting PM has dismissed doctors’ concerns of censorship, saying they shouldn't make public submissions about “fast food restaurants” or “leading advocacy campaigns”.

I've written before about exercise - actually I've written quite a lot about exercise here, here, here and here and definitely elsewhere on my blog. Exercise is, without a doubt, one of the most commonly 'prescribed' approaches for persisting or chronic pain. Whether 'exercise' is the thing, 'movement practices' or 'meaningful movement' is ubiquitous. So much for not enjoying exercise, if you have persistent pain you're going to get told to do some.

After reading more 'exercise plus ' than I'd like to count, here's a study I'd really like to see - and why. Exercise for chronic or persisting pain is widely touted as a means to reduce pain and maintain function. So much so that when I do a search in Google Scholar using the terms 'exercise and chronic pain' in 0.10 seconds 'about 2,450,000 results' show up.

When researchers use randomised controlled trials as the way to investigate health interventions, it's usual to clearly describe inclusion and exclusion criteria. This makes sure the participants all share the same characteristics so any effects from the experiment can be fairly evaluated. It wouldn't be fair to have some people in the experimental group without the disease, or for them to have a different disease from the one targeted by the intervention.