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8nbVq8oVakvAp6SX  2yr ago (text post)   1882 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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There’s this, specifically for back pain: https://www.bidmc.org/about-bidmc/news/2021/09/researchers-mind-body-program-outperforms-other-chronic-back-pain-treatment

Surgery and steroid injections for back pain strike me as one of those "when all you have is a hammer" type problems.

Has there ever been a study of the obvious solution involving a shoulder harness, block and tackle, and a tall tree?

No but inversion tables have been shown to be helpful

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