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How retraining your brain could help with lower back pain
Are you among the hundreds of millions of people worldwide with low back pain? If so, you may be familiar with standard treatments like surgery, shots, medications, and spinal manipulations. But new research suggests the solution for the world’s leading cause of disability may lie in fixing how the brain and the body communicate.
Setting out to challenge traditional treatments for chronic back pain, scientists across Australia, Europe, and the United States came together to test the effectiveness of altering how neural networks recognize pain for new research published this week in JAMA.
The randomized clinical trial recruited two groups of 138 participants with chronic low back pain, testing one group with a novel method called graded sensorimotor retraining intervention (RESOLVE) and the other with things like mock laser therapy and noninvasive brain stimulation.
The researchers found the RESOLVE 12-week training course resulted in a statistically significant improvement in pain intensity at 18 weeks.
“What we observed in our trial was a clinically meaningful effect on pain intensity and a clinically meaningful effect on disability. People were happier, they reported their backs felt better, and their quality of life was better,” the study’s lead author, James McAuley, PhD, said in a statement. “This is the first new treatment of its kind for back pain.”
Brainy talk
Communication between your brain and back changes over time when you have chronic lower back pain, leading the brain to interpret signals from the back differently and change how you move. It is thought that these neural changes make recovery from pain slower and more complicated , according to Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), a nonprofit research institute in Sydney.
“Over time, the back becomes less fit, and the way the back and brain communicate is disrupted in ways that seem to reinforce the notion that the back is vulnerable and needs protecting,” said Dr. McAuley, a professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and a NeuRA senior research scientist. “The treatment we devised aims to break this self-sustaining cycle.”
RESOLVE treatment focuses on improving this transformed brain-back communication by slowly retraining the body and the brain without the use of opioids or surgery. People in the study have reported improved quality of life 1 year later, according to Dr. McAuley.
The researchers said the pain improvement was “modest,” and the method will need to be tested on other patients and conditions. They hope to introduce this new treatment to doctors and physiotherapists within the next 6-9 months and have already enlisted partner organizations to start this process, according to NeuRA.
A version of this article first appeared on Webmd.com.
Are you among the hundreds of millions of people worldwide with low back pain? If so, you may be familiar with standard treatments like surgery, shots, medications, and spinal manipulations. But new research suggests the solution for the world’s leading cause of disability may lie in fixing how the brain and the body communicate.
Setting out to challenge traditional treatments for chronic back pain, scientists across Australia, Europe, and the United States came together to test the effectiveness of altering how neural networks recognize pain for new research published this week in JAMA.
The randomized clinical trial recruited two groups of 138 participants with chronic low back pain, testing one group with a novel method called graded sensorimotor retraining intervention (RESOLVE) and the other with things like mock laser therapy and noninvasive brain stimulation.
The researchers found the RESOLVE 12-week training course resulted in a statistically significant improvement in pain intensity at 18 weeks.
“What we observed in our trial was a clinically meaningful effect on pain intensity and a clinically meaningful effect on disability. People were happier, they reported their backs felt better, and their quality of life was better,” the study’s lead author, James McAuley, PhD, said in a statement. “This is the first new treatment of its kind for back pain.”
Brainy talk
Communication between your brain and back changes over time when you have chronic lower back pain, leading the brain to interpret signals from the back differently and change how you move. It is thought that these neural changes make recovery from pain slower and more complicated , according to Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), a nonprofit research institute in Sydney.
“Over time, the back becomes less fit, and the way the back and brain communicate is disrupted in ways that seem to reinforce the notion that the back is vulnerable and needs protecting,” said Dr. McAuley, a professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and a NeuRA senior research scientist. “The treatment we devised aims to break this self-sustaining cycle.”
RESOLVE treatment focuses on improving this transformed brain-back communication by slowly retraining the body and the brain without the use of opioids or surgery. People in the study have reported improved quality of life 1 year later, according to Dr. McAuley.
The researchers said the pain improvement was “modest,” and the method will need to be tested on other patients and conditions. They hope to introduce this new treatment to doctors and physiotherapists within the next 6-9 months and have already enlisted partner organizations to start this process, according to NeuRA.
A version of this article first appeared on Webmd.com.
Are you among the hundreds of millions of people worldwide with low back pain? If so, you may be familiar with standard treatments like surgery, shots, medications, and spinal manipulations. But new research suggests the solution for the world’s leading cause of disability may lie in fixing how the brain and the body communicate.
Setting out to challenge traditional treatments for chronic back pain, scientists across Australia, Europe, and the United States came together to test the effectiveness of altering how neural networks recognize pain for new research published this week in JAMA.
The randomized clinical trial recruited two groups of 138 participants with chronic low back pain, testing one group with a novel method called graded sensorimotor retraining intervention (RESOLVE) and the other with things like mock laser therapy and noninvasive brain stimulation.
The researchers found the RESOLVE 12-week training course resulted in a statistically significant improvement in pain intensity at 18 weeks.
“What we observed in our trial was a clinically meaningful effect on pain intensity and a clinically meaningful effect on disability. People were happier, they reported their backs felt better, and their quality of life was better,” the study’s lead author, James McAuley, PhD, said in a statement. “This is the first new treatment of its kind for back pain.”
Brainy talk
Communication between your brain and back changes over time when you have chronic lower back pain, leading the brain to interpret signals from the back differently and change how you move. It is thought that these neural changes make recovery from pain slower and more complicated , according to Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), a nonprofit research institute in Sydney.
“Over time, the back becomes less fit, and the way the back and brain communicate is disrupted in ways that seem to reinforce the notion that the back is vulnerable and needs protecting,” said Dr. McAuley, a professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and a NeuRA senior research scientist. “The treatment we devised aims to break this self-sustaining cycle.”
RESOLVE treatment focuses on improving this transformed brain-back communication by slowly retraining the body and the brain without the use of opioids or surgery. People in the study have reported improved quality of life 1 year later, according to Dr. McAuley.
The researchers said the pain improvement was “modest,” and the method will need to be tested on other patients and conditions. They hope to introduce this new treatment to doctors and physiotherapists within the next 6-9 months and have already enlisted partner organizations to start this process, according to NeuRA.
A version of this article first appeared on Webmd.com.
‘Go Ask Alice’: A fake view of teen mental health
If you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, chances are high you’re familiar with “Go Ask Alice.”
What was then said to be the real diary of a 15-year-old promising teen turned drug addict was released in 1971 as a cautionary tale and has since sold over 5 million copies. The diary was harrowing against the backdrop of the war on drugs and soon became both acclaimed and banned from classrooms across the country.
Schools citied “inappropriate” language that “borders on pornography” as grounds to prohibit teenagers from reading Alice’s story. But as much as the book’s vivid writing offended readers, it drew millions in with its profanity and graphic descriptions of sex, drugs, and mental health struggles.
At the time, The New York Times reviewed the book as “a strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid and true story ... a document of horrifying reality,” but the popular diary was later found to be a ploy – a fake story written by a 54-year-old Mormon youth counselor named Beatrice Sparks.
Now, Ms. Sparks, who died in 2012, has been further exposed in radio personality Rick Emerson’s new book, “Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries.” Mr. Emerson published the exposé in July, years after he had the idea to investigate Ms. Sparks’s work in 2015. The book details Ms. Sparks’s background, her journey in creating Alice, and her quest to be recognized for the teen diary she had published as “Anonymous.”
“After 30 years of trying, Beatrice Sparks had changed the world. And nobody knew it,” Mr. Emerson told the New York Post.In his work, Mr. Emerson also dives into the profound impact of the diary at a time when not as much research existed on teen mental health.
When the teenager whose diary inspired Ms. Sparks’s writing “died in March 1971, the very first true study of adolescent psychology had just barely come out,” Mr. Emerson said to Rolling Stone. “Mental health, especially for young people, was still very much on training wheels.”
According to Mr. Emerson, a lack of insight into mental health issues allowed Ms. Sparks’s description to go relatively unchallenged and for the book’s influence to spread despite its misinformation.
“It’s indisputable that large sections of ‘Go Ask Alice’ are just embellished and/or false,” he told the Post.
Then versus now
This landscape is in stark contrast to today, where thousands of studies on the topic have been done, compared with the mere dozens in the 1970s.
Anxiety and depression in minors have increased over time, a trend worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the CDC. Studies have shown that reported drug use in teens has decreased over time, proving significant during the pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.
While Alice from “Go Ask Alice” has not existed in either, comparing the two periods can offer insight into teen struggles in the 1970s versus today and sheds light on how literature – fiction or even faked nonfiction – can transform a nation.
A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.
If you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, chances are high you’re familiar with “Go Ask Alice.”
What was then said to be the real diary of a 15-year-old promising teen turned drug addict was released in 1971 as a cautionary tale and has since sold over 5 million copies. The diary was harrowing against the backdrop of the war on drugs and soon became both acclaimed and banned from classrooms across the country.
Schools citied “inappropriate” language that “borders on pornography” as grounds to prohibit teenagers from reading Alice’s story. But as much as the book’s vivid writing offended readers, it drew millions in with its profanity and graphic descriptions of sex, drugs, and mental health struggles.
At the time, The New York Times reviewed the book as “a strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid and true story ... a document of horrifying reality,” but the popular diary was later found to be a ploy – a fake story written by a 54-year-old Mormon youth counselor named Beatrice Sparks.
Now, Ms. Sparks, who died in 2012, has been further exposed in radio personality Rick Emerson’s new book, “Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries.” Mr. Emerson published the exposé in July, years after he had the idea to investigate Ms. Sparks’s work in 2015. The book details Ms. Sparks’s background, her journey in creating Alice, and her quest to be recognized for the teen diary she had published as “Anonymous.”
“After 30 years of trying, Beatrice Sparks had changed the world. And nobody knew it,” Mr. Emerson told the New York Post.In his work, Mr. Emerson also dives into the profound impact of the diary at a time when not as much research existed on teen mental health.
When the teenager whose diary inspired Ms. Sparks’s writing “died in March 1971, the very first true study of adolescent psychology had just barely come out,” Mr. Emerson said to Rolling Stone. “Mental health, especially for young people, was still very much on training wheels.”
According to Mr. Emerson, a lack of insight into mental health issues allowed Ms. Sparks’s description to go relatively unchallenged and for the book’s influence to spread despite its misinformation.
“It’s indisputable that large sections of ‘Go Ask Alice’ are just embellished and/or false,” he told the Post.
Then versus now
This landscape is in stark contrast to today, where thousands of studies on the topic have been done, compared with the mere dozens in the 1970s.
Anxiety and depression in minors have increased over time, a trend worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the CDC. Studies have shown that reported drug use in teens has decreased over time, proving significant during the pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.
While Alice from “Go Ask Alice” has not existed in either, comparing the two periods can offer insight into teen struggles in the 1970s versus today and sheds light on how literature – fiction or even faked nonfiction – can transform a nation.
A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.
If you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, chances are high you’re familiar with “Go Ask Alice.”
What was then said to be the real diary of a 15-year-old promising teen turned drug addict was released in 1971 as a cautionary tale and has since sold over 5 million copies. The diary was harrowing against the backdrop of the war on drugs and soon became both acclaimed and banned from classrooms across the country.
Schools citied “inappropriate” language that “borders on pornography” as grounds to prohibit teenagers from reading Alice’s story. But as much as the book’s vivid writing offended readers, it drew millions in with its profanity and graphic descriptions of sex, drugs, and mental health struggles.
At the time, The New York Times reviewed the book as “a strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid and true story ... a document of horrifying reality,” but the popular diary was later found to be a ploy – a fake story written by a 54-year-old Mormon youth counselor named Beatrice Sparks.
Now, Ms. Sparks, who died in 2012, has been further exposed in radio personality Rick Emerson’s new book, “Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries.” Mr. Emerson published the exposé in July, years after he had the idea to investigate Ms. Sparks’s work in 2015. The book details Ms. Sparks’s background, her journey in creating Alice, and her quest to be recognized for the teen diary she had published as “Anonymous.”
“After 30 years of trying, Beatrice Sparks had changed the world. And nobody knew it,” Mr. Emerson told the New York Post.In his work, Mr. Emerson also dives into the profound impact of the diary at a time when not as much research existed on teen mental health.
When the teenager whose diary inspired Ms. Sparks’s writing “died in March 1971, the very first true study of adolescent psychology had just barely come out,” Mr. Emerson said to Rolling Stone. “Mental health, especially for young people, was still very much on training wheels.”
According to Mr. Emerson, a lack of insight into mental health issues allowed Ms. Sparks’s description to go relatively unchallenged and for the book’s influence to spread despite its misinformation.
“It’s indisputable that large sections of ‘Go Ask Alice’ are just embellished and/or false,” he told the Post.
Then versus now
This landscape is in stark contrast to today, where thousands of studies on the topic have been done, compared with the mere dozens in the 1970s.
Anxiety and depression in minors have increased over time, a trend worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the CDC. Studies have shown that reported drug use in teens has decreased over time, proving significant during the pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.
While Alice from “Go Ask Alice” has not existed in either, comparing the two periods can offer insight into teen struggles in the 1970s versus today and sheds light on how literature – fiction or even faked nonfiction – can transform a nation.
A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.