Louw A, Puentedura EJ, Zimney K, Schmidt S. Know Pain, Know Gain? A perspective on Pain Neuroscience Education in Physical Therapy. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2016;46(3):131-134.
- “Pain is a normal human experience and essential to survival”
This portion is rarely spoken of in PT school and we spend our time in school learning how to shut down the pain, either in an ideal way of dealing with a mechanical problem or in a way in which we “trick” the brain of not seeing the pain for a short period of time. When working with patients, I often describe the gate control theory as the “Three Stooges” way of treating pain. For instance, if you have a headache and I hit your foot with a hammer, what happened to your headache. I stole the example from my dad, because this is how he would always respond if I told him my arm was sore after baseball practice. This was way back in the 1980’s and he was a laborer by trade. The gate control theory makes sense to most people, but we can also see the example and understand that it is probably not the best way to fix a problem, as we end up with a broken foot from the hammer.
- “The pain neuromatrix explained our knowledge and understanding of the functional and structural changes in the brains of people suffering from chronic pain”
To simplify, we have pain because our brains tell us that something is painful. This could be due to past experiences, actual painful stimuli eliciting Nociception, super excited nerves , so on and so forth.
- “biomedical models may induce fear and anxiety, which may further fuel fear avoidance and pain catastrophization”
It is very common for a patient to come into the clinic and say that he/she is avoiding a particular activity because of a history of a herniated disc. There is research that shows that a herniated disc can become “unherniated” (for a lack of a more layman’s term) over the course of 6 months. The patients are never educated regarding this point. Once a herniation, always a herniation is just not true. This biomedical or pathoanatomical (patho=bad and anatomical = body parts) model of health care is outdated and simply is not as useful to use with the general public because research demonstrates that the patient may become “sick listed” and from there stop participating in previously enjoyable activities.
- “a plethora of papers have been dedicated to a mere 20-millisecond delay of abdominal muscle contraction, yet despite the enormous amount of time, money and energy spent on this science, clinically it has yet to provide results superior to those of any other form of exercise for low back pain”
Doing the vacuum pose while lying down is no better than doing a general squat or learning how to utilize your diaphragm during breathing mechanics. As the layperson, there are many people that want to take your money in the health care industry. (I hate to say it like this, but healthcare is a huge business and the public needs to see it as so.) When the new fad comes out to solve back pain, don’t buy into the infomercial and as a matter of fact, turn off the t.v. and go get a book from the local library. You will spend hundreds of dollars less than what is proposed on the infomercial and be better off after having read the book. Nothing beats knowledge and the smarter you are at taking care of yourself, the better armed you are when you actually get in front of a health care practitioner. Remember, it is a business and we all want your money if you will give it to us. A better use of your time is to come educated so that I don’t have to teach you the basics of posture for 30 minutes, but can instead can teach you how to perform more high level movement patterns instead of sitting properly to reduce your pain. Oh wait, pain is normal. I’d lose my job if I sold this to all of my patients, but instead the patients need to be educated between hurt and harm.
- “In all health care education, be it smoking cessation, weight loss, or breaking addiction, the ultimate goal is behavior change.”
Speaking as a physical therapist, I can’t stress to the patients enough how the therapy experience is a team. Smart people call it therapeutic alliance, but I’ll settle for team. My part is to educate the patient and attempt to solve the puzzle of the patient’s pain, but it is the patient’s job to take the information that they have gained during the session and go home and apply it to their daily lives. For a patient to do nothing at home, AKA make no changes in behavior, and come to the following session thinking that the pain will go away is similar to :
https://spencergarnold.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/snatch-miracle.jpg
Patients may come hoping for a miracle, but it is not to be. The patient and therapist have to work together to attempt to solve the pain problem. If one side of the team is not doing their part, then the PT has to be willing to discharge the patient or the patient has to be willing to fire the PT.
- “…when PNE (Pain Nueroscience Education [pain is a normal human response]) is paired combined with either exercise or manual therapy, it is far superior in reducing pain compared to education alone”
From this I take that teaching the patient and then moving the patient is better than just teaching the patient. We can all agree that low level exercise is good for people. If we don’t agree with this, then we are saying that it is safer long term to live like a slug then to get up and walk around the living room. It just isn’t so. People will refuse to get up and walk around the living room when they start experiencing low back tightness, leg fatigue, or the dreaded “Fran cough” (look it up and btw I am an advocate professionally speaking). We as a society have to start moving more and learn about how our body is supposed to work. This can not be done from infomercials that have pictures of pulsating backs or frowning stomach fat.