Valence Massage and Physical Therapy

Do you feel like your doctor cares about your pain?

People in chronic pain get better when their clinician has empathy. Put another way, there is independent clinical value (putting aside everything else, including what interventions happen) in having your doctor/therapist validate and understand your experience of pain.

Empathy is medicinal.

Imagine trying to encourage a doctor to be empathic with a citation: “So I found this on PubMed, and it SAYS RIGHT HERE you should give a 💩 about how I feel…” 😜

This study of chronic low back pain patients reports that they did better with more empathic physicians.

Quite a bit better!

I’m not really surprised by the positive result, but I am surprised by HOW positive it was.

Licciardone et al. divided physicians into two groups, “very” empathic and only “slightly” empathic, as determined by a survey (the “Consultation and Relational Empathy measure”). Various scores were much better for the lucky patients who got some empathy — disability and fatigue especially, but ALSO ACTUAL PAIN INTENSITY. “All physician empathy group differences were clinically relevant.”

Clinically relevant caring!

THE COMPASSIONATE “ALTERNATIVE”

The main thing alternative medicine SHOULD be the alternative to is not medical TREATMENTS, but the fast and cold style of doctors. “Not all doctors,” obviously, but physicians will always struggle to be empathic because of the scale, institutionalization, and harsh dilemmas of medicine.

For instance, neurologists can’t really be expected to be patient troubleshooters of maybe-neurology problems that are legitimately beyond their understanding when they are appropriately preoccupied with (and probably overwhelmed by) challenges like strokes, MS, and ALS.

This evidence really adds some weight to the argument that alternative medicine should focus on supplying what doctors often cannot: empathy! Because it actually helps. (And homeopathy doesn’t.)

~ Paul Ingraham, PainScience.com publisher

The study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11009829/

Web version of this post:
PainScience.com/blog/empathy-is-medicinal.html

About homeopathy:
PainScience.com/homeopathy

About "alternative medicine's choice":
PainScience.com/alternative_to_what

I couldn't be happier with my new sign!

Another project complete! This time for Valence Massage and Physical Therapy.

Thanks for shopping small, and trusting us with your signage needs!

If you’re a local business owner and are looking for an upgrade in signage, give us a call.

(417) 830-2630

Halfway there! The bottom of the sign comes next week.

Exercise is HUGE for depression, often better than therapy or drugs. Combine it with massage therapy (which has itself been shown to be as effective as psychotherapy for depression) or with the traditional therapies and the effect can be amplified.

May was Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm a little behind schedule.

INFOGRAPHIC: Researchers rank the best workouts for depression
Evidence shows that if you have depression, you should get a psychologist and an exercise plan.
https://www.freethink.com/health/exercise-depression-yoga-running

It's easily forgotten that massage through multiple trials has shown to be as effective for anxiety and depression as psychotherapy. Good self-care is part of good mental health.

Massage Therapy for Mental Health Although massage is often treated like a luxury, its potential benefits are anything but shallow.

Getting massage, or any touch based therapy is really good for you. It improves mental and physical health.

In case you don't believe me, here is an enormous systematic review and meta-analysis looking at hundreds of studies.

www.nature.com

Be careful which stories you believe regarding back pain. There is no shortage of wellness folks itching to convince you that your back is fragile and needs constant passive therapy (scraping, needles, cupping, deep tissue, adjusting, decompression, etc.) to work. While passive therapy helps in the short term, a long term plan (involving movement and exercise) is needed to get you back to living your best life.

https://www.facebook.com/100044587811170/posts/951737706322481/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

We have officially moved to 3259 E Sunshine! We are now located at the corner of Sunshine and Deeswood, right behind the Scooter's Coffee! I assure you, we are still open while I get situated. Here is a picture of my front door, as you can see I haven't gotten the sign replaced yet. More big changes coming soon...

I know "deep tissue" is all the rage, but maybe just don't? https://www.facebook.com/100028021370385/posts/1286257278984972/

Large Buttocks Hematoma Caused by Deep Tissue Massage Therapy Dear Editor

Almost there...

This is another modality trend blowing up.

I have seen a huge uptick in patients shopping for a particular modality in massage therapy and physical therapy. This is your friendly reminder that most of these options are poorly researched fads. This last month, for example, several people were searching for dry-needling:

I Was Wrong About the Value of Dry Needling — Twice If someone changes their views, do you applaud or condemn them? Are they someone who challenged their bias and viewpoint or are they a flip-flopper who lacks conviction? I am of the former opinion. I ascribe to the Paul Saffo mantra of ‘strong opinions, weakly held.’ I will stand by my beliefs u...

Massage should be a part of your planned health spending to prevent the need for medical services.

INFOGRAPHIC: What Makes Us Healthy vs. What We Spend on Being Healthy | Bipartisan Policy Center Changing behavior is never easy, particularly when that behavior is rooted in much deeper changes in the way many Americans live, work, play and…

Did you know that massage is recommended for people with anxiety and depression disorders?

"...findings have suggested that massage may acutely decrease hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activity, have a positive effect on immune function, enhance parasympathetic tone, and modulate brain circuitry. The approach and philosophy of well-trained massage therapists is complementary to conventional psychiatric training and can thus be an important additional resource in treating patients. A respectful and collaborative approach to care may truly help patients."

Massage for psychiatric patients and disorders:

Massage Therapy for Psychiatric Disorders This article reviews the role of massage therapy in the treatment of common psychiatric disorders and briefly discusses the prevalence and popularity of complementary and integrative treatments in the general population and touches on the literature on ...

Great News, I am now open on Tuesdays and Thursdays again! Thanks for hanging in there for the last 3 years, I know it has not been easy to get in promptly! Also, I am a Doctor of Physical Therapy now. Thank you for being patient! (Also for being a patient)

Valence Updates 2022 - Just a quick note on my upcoming graduation and the future.

Valence Updates 2022 Many of you already know that in May of 2020 I began a 3 year Doctor of Physical Therapy program. With just a basic grasp of how time works, you might be asking, “doesn’t that mean you will be graduating in May of 2023?” Yes, provided I pass the NPTE (a lovely 5-hour board exam).

Happy Monday! I just wanted to let everyone know I'm still here and open on Saturdays. I know I have been booked and it has been a task to get in this year, but my schedule has calmed down recently. There are quite a few openings coming up in the next few weeks, hop on my schedule if it's been awhile.

As for my education: I've finished all my classes, but I am still completing clinical internships until May. After that, I'll be a massage therapist and a Doctor of Physical Therapy! Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me through this long journey.

Why Most People Are Wrong About Injuries and Pain - SimpliFaster Although we grow up believing that injuries and pain are closely linked, this is not always the case. Various studies between tissue damage and pain show that we can have one without the other. Pain, it turns out, is a relatively complex problem, relying on environmental context and a host of other....

This is a cute animal thread.

Amazing! 32 y.o woman with high-grade spondylolisthesis but did not have LBP and any functional limitation.

😎 Disc protrusion completely resolves on its own!

👋🏻 Here's a case report of a 28 year old with severe back and leg pain

📸 MRI November 2018 showed “Large L4/5disc protrusion w severe cord narrowing/ crowding of cauda equina rootlets”....

🕒 7 months later and a new round of imaging

📸 MRI May 2019 showed reabsorption and now pain free! 😱

➡️ This is a great example of conservative Mx & ‘watch & wait’ approach. We don't know exactly what his treatment consisted of, but we know from the research that disc problems resolve on their own

📚 A meta-analysis (Zhong et al 2017) has shown that 2/3 of disc bulges spontaneously «heal» on their own! Many of them within a few months too, not years

❌ This does not mean that no one should ever undergo surgery. Each patient must be managed on an individual basis

🙌🏻 Thanks to Dan Board for bringing this case to our attention.

Spinal arthritis is normal, and usually is not associated with pain. You cannot see back pain on an MRI, and the findings on an MRI “do not have clinically important associations with low back pain.”

Association of Lumbar MRI Findings with Current and Future Back Pain in a Population-based Cohort Study Huge study of the relationship between back pain and common signs of spinal arthritis, finding mostly that … there wasn’t much of one. The correlation was there, it was just puny. MRI findings “do…

I've been open for 10 years.

Another day, another optical illusion. Credit: unknown

Mice with Fibromyalgia? Come on, science!

STUDY: Miserable mice! Fibromyalgia transplanted to mice…in blood? Serum from humans with fibromyalgia can “infect” mice.

This is so cool!

This is how nerves connect your teeth to your brain.

Imaging is one kind of test. Findings on imaging may have nothing to do with pain. "Degenerative" changes are often just normal aging.