(You may remember Barb from the Yva Las Vegass piece. Here see her inflicting pain! They spent an hour interviewing her and then didn't even talk about her work, but I will.)
The Changing Science of Pain
Millions of aging boomers and the latest generation of wounded soldiers hope the secrets of our most enduring medical foe can finally be unlocked.
Interesting facts from the article:
With casualties mounting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is being forced to change its strategy. More than 90 percent of wounded soldiers have made it off the battlefield—the highest survival rate in American history—only to overwhelm chronic-pain clinics when they come home.
Aging baby boomers have reported in surveys more aches and pains than any previous generation.
Civilian chronic pain already costs the country $61 billion in lost productivity and many more in medical fees. Treating the soldiers in the coming years will add at least $340 billion to the toll.
Docs now know that the brain and spinal cord rewire themselves in response to injuries, forming "pain pathways" that can become pathologically overactive years later.
The brain keeps a diary of the injuries the body receives, writing each entry by reconfiguring certain neurons into new, interconnected patterns.
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The article talks about advances in pain management, whether by physical therapy, electrical stimulation, drugs, etc. or a combination. The whole thing is worth reading.
Barb uses Postural Reconstruction, which wasn't really covered in the article. Perusing the internet, I see it described as Postural Reconstruction - is a total body neuromuscular technique, based on the concept that tonic imbalances in the muscle chains of the body lead to muscular shortening causing mechanical dysfunction, pain and injury. Most of the information I found was Canadian, not American, and Barb was trained in Montreal.
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