In my last post I suggested patients might benefit from new ways of studying chronic pain. When I look at what is available in the popular press as well as the scientific literature, it feels like we are caught in a morass of conflicting opinions and research results. Sometimes when trying to make sense of it all, it gives me a pain in a region well below my neck.

The problem is that there are still no theories good enough to explain conflicting research results or settle arguments about causes of chronic pain. A good theory has to be able to explain everything we do know about pain and push us toward new avenues of research.

For example, once Einstein published his theory of relativity, the door opened to new kinds of research and amazing discoveries. The discovery of how DNA works caused a revolution in biological science. Pain medicine could stand a little revolution if that would lead us to better treatment.

Many of us who work in this field feel this way and some are working hard toward a revolution in pain medicine. In my reading about pain I came across a scientific article that impressed me as a big step toward rethinking pain. It’s long, complicated and demands a lot of the reader – it is not light reading.

Nevertheless it is a great example of scientific reasoning and creativity. I think it is a very important paper because it suggests chronic pain may be related to specific biological systems that can be activated by stress and trauma. It pulls together a lot of different knowledge to arrive at its conclusions and suggests lots of new research.

Here is a link:

http://www.painaustralia.org.au/healthcare-professionals/research.html

Look for the following title and click on it.

An Evolutionary Stress-Response Hypothesis for Chronic Widespread Pain (Fibromyalgia Syndrome)

Give it a try and let us know what you think. It is a fresh look at chronic pain but only time and more research will tell us how useful it is.