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8nbVq8oVakvAp6SX  3yr ago (text post)   2408 thread views

What experimental evidence is there that chronic pain is psychosomatic?

There have been claims of this by commenters, but only anecdotal evidence given. Last I checked, the accepted/preferred scientific explanation was "central sensitization," though I couldn't find an experiment showing chronic sensitization exists. (Lots with decerebrated mice who were immediately euthanized, though, going back to the 1980s, if I remember correctly.) Psychosomatization, to the best of my knowledge, is non-falsifiable and conditions have been misattributed to it in the past. It hasn't yet been replicated, so far as I know, but there was a clever experiment published 18 months ago that may prove fibromyalgia (one of the chronic pain conditions most commonly regarded as psychosomatic) is actually an auto-immune disorder, which would be a big blow to "psychosomatization of the gaps" proponents. (E.G., The "Unlearn Your Pain" author.)

Is this just a case of Scott making an off-hand comment and others running with it beyond what the evidence can support?

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Having had some recurring back spine/nerve related pain after an accident, I'm a bit dubious on the psychosomatic front.

Maybe my pain was just entirely biological because pain killers surely fixed my shit up for a few hours. While not medicated I could "choose" to ignore the pain and it would go away for a while but it would return basically any time I moved "the wrong way" or was "reminded" of my problem spots by a sharp stabbing of pain when rotating my upper torso in a specific way.

I think the idea is more like this:

You have an injury, brain tightens certain muscles to protect them --> The muscles heal over time, but you have a trapped prior around constricting that area --> If you can't get muscles to release, constant muscular tension begins to cascade into other muscles and areas of the body.

Which implies that painkillers and muscle relaxants can relieve pain for far longer than they're supposed to last in such cases by helping to break the cycle.

Which conforms to my personal experience as well. Though I'd expect cases of chronic pain to be filtered a bit against cases where that works.

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