Physical activity is now considered one of the “big four” lifestyle factors (along with smoking, nutrition, and drug abuse) that have major effects on health. In 2015, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges put out a report summarizing the benefits of exercise, calling it both a “miracle cure” and a “wonder drug.” [1] The report […]
Low back pain is extremely common. In fact, if you don’t have at least some back pain every year or so, you’re kind of abnormal. (Not that you’re really missing out on anything.) Fortunately, if you do get back pain, your chances of getting rid of it in fairly short order are excellent. More than […]
Joel Seedman, a personal trainer, recently wrote an article called “The Truth about Pain Science and Biomechanics”, which presents a lengthy attack on “pain science experts.” Seedman claims they spread dangerous misinformation about the connection between movement and pain, including that pain is all in your head, that injuries or tissue damage don’t matter for […]
Pain can be a complex phenomenon, meaning that many different factors might contribute to pain, and that these factors can be interwoven in a way that makes it very hard to separate one from the other, either for purposes of explaining pain or intervening to treat it in some way. This is a major […]
What does the word placebo mean? Does the placebo effect involve actual health benefits or just imagined benefits? Is placebo “mind over body” or “all in your head”? Is it unethical to provide a client with placebo treatments? And what about nocebos? In this article, I’ll answer these questions and discuss some fascinating research […]
What you see is affected by what you know, and what you hear, and what you touch, and vice versa. This is an example of multi-modal perception. The brain is very complex, and all its different parts integrate and share information acquired from any source – eyes, ears, touch, memories, predictions, expectations, Facebook, etc. We often […]