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Chronic pain is epidemic. It is estimated that 25% of American adults live with chronic pain and the costs in terms of medical expense and lost productivity run into billions of dollars every year. It is impossible to calculate the cost in terms effect on the quality of so many people's lives. 

We are excited to be offering a two hour pain education class at Forest Park Community College on Saturday, April 12, 2014. The class, Explaining Pain: Help Manage Chronic Pain, is for anyone who lives with chronic pain, anyone who lives or works with individuals with chronic pain, or anyone who wants to better understand chronic pain. Professionals, non-professionals, people with pain or people without pain are all welcome.

This two hour lecture will introduce you to what modern pain science has learned about chronic pain and ways that may help you manage it more effectively. The class will be based on the book Explain Pain by Butler and Moseley. 

These are notes from a presentation given at the Skeptical Society of St. Louis Skepticamp on Saturday, September 14, 2013. Links to some of the resources and studies mentioned during the presentation, as well as additional links that may be of interest, are provided for those who would like to look at them.

A Skeptical Look at Back Pain: Notes from Skepticamp 2013

In 1995 I was working at St. Mary’s hospital when I heard about this study which examined 98 people who had no low back pain (LBP) and found that a large percentage had herniated discs. ("asymptomatic" means without symptoms i.e. no pain)

 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199407143310201

            98 asymptomatic individuals ages 20 – 80

            36% normal discs at all levels

            52% bulging disc at at least 1 level

            38% abnormal at more than one level

            Findings similar in men & women

            Abnormalities increased with age

 The new True Runner store in Brentwood Plaza recently hosted an after-hours Ladies' Night and Massage St. Louis was there! It was a great event, with about 80 women of all ages in attendance. The atmosphere was friendly and festive, with tasty and healthy drinks and snacks available, attendance prizes, goodie bags for participants, and discounts on purchases made at the event. A representative from Moving Comfort gave a presentation on proper bra fitting and was available for private fittings. Massage St. Louis was there providing brief table massages and speaking with participants about self-help techniques and how massage can help them as runners. Participants loved the table massages and were often heard to exclaim, "Wow! That was great! I feel so much better!"

A drawing for a 30 minute massage was held at the end of the evening and Alex Roth was the lucky winner. Congratulations, Alex!

Of course, all the wonderful women in attendance were obviously winners! It was a great, friendly, enthusiastic group. Gotta love those runners! 

Until now, I have not published guest articles nor have I published articles unrelated to massage therapy. However, I recently read a paper on gay men, addiction, and post traumatic stress disorder that presented an idea so important that I strongly felt it should be more widely read. As massage therapists, we encounter clients who may seek massage to relieve anxiety and depression and this information could be directly relevant to us.

The author is my long time friend Jeffrey Schneider, volunteer and outreach coordinator for the San Francisco Zen Center. Jeffrey wrote the paper as part of his training to be a drug and alcohol abuse counselor. The paper puts forth the idea that post traumatic stress disorder, caused by growing up in a world where young gay men live in constant fear, may be an unrecognized factor in drug and alcohol addiction in gay men.

This page was written as a reference for those who attended the Skeptical Society of St. Louis Skepticamp, Saturday, August 18, 2012. It includes websites mentioned during a presentation on the field of massage therapy from the point of view of a science-based massage therapist. The title of the presentation was "Woo, Sloppy Thinking, and Language."

The world of therapeutic massage took a giant leap forward today as Ravensara Travillian presented the Project for Open Education in Massage (POEM) to the public. The world of massage therapy will never be the same.

What is POEM?

Impossible to describe in just a few words, POEM is a resource for massage therapists like nothing ever seen before. It is an online gathering place for massage therapists that is intelligent, articulate, and civilized, much like Ravensara herself. It is a resource for learning about the latest research, learning how to read and understand research, learning how to do case studies. Still incomplete and in a testing stage, it will include forums, quizzes, places to pose questions, articles, and educational material, including Raven's book on research literacy for massage therapists. Not only will research papers be presented but also analyzed and critiqued, allowing the massage therapist to learn to evaluate the quality of research. POEM's stated intention is to: