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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham)

@painsci.bsky.social
1.4K followers 193 following 1.3K posts

Highlights and skeptical snark about the science of chronic pain and injury rehab, from PainScience.com publisher Paul Ingraham. + Digressions into astronomy, Roman history, palaeontology, more. Everything is too interesting to focus!

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Reposted by PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham)
The Creatively Maladjusted @tyrotcm.bsky.social · 22h
Small donations move the needle, make it clear that a fundraiser is going somewhere. People are less likely to see stagnant fundraisers. Set aside a little every month, whatever you can afford. Donate often in $1-$10 chunks & challenge folks to match your donation. It's remarkably effective.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 19h
PainScience.com just sped up. It’s now on a new server, and roughly 3× faster where it counts the most, like displaying member account pages and books. It’s also a new KIND of server: one I manage myself, a self-managed Virtual Private Server. Nerrrrd. 🤓 www.painscience.com/blog/painsci...
painscience.com
PainScience.com just sped up
I’m running my own server now — and it’s cheaper, better, and easier.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I get “invited” to a LOT of battles. This morning I got this invitation from a reader who is outraged that I’ve characterized ozone therapy as quackery: “No response would equate to I’m right and you’re wrong.” LOL, nope! No response = not wasting my damn time. www.painscience.com/ozone_therapy
painscience.com
Ozone Therapy for Pain: The Skeptical Position
Critical analysis of ozone therapy for low back pain, osteoarthritis, and fibromyalgia.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Does #sleepapnea make #chronicpain worse? Less than you’d think: in a huge study, the correlation mostly evaporated once age, weight & health were accounted for. Link likely real…but weak/messy. Photo: recent sleep lab selfie! NEW POST, 4m read, plus audio: www.painscience.com/blog/sleep-a...
painscience.com
Sleep apnea and pain: not the clear link you’d think
Probably related, but weakly and messily (plus a sleep-lab selfie)
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Another night, another #moon. It was photogenic for a 6th night — but only just barely! Sharp focus wasn't possible due to high, thin cloud, but I did get a nice ghostly halo! 👻 This was Sep 21 in Vancouver: waxing gibbous 78% illuminated. I also got a nice wide shot of moonlit clouds.
A nighttime landscape viewed over a dark, tree-covered residential area, with the bright moon partially obscured by a dramatic cluster of illuminated clouds near the upper centre of the image. The moonlight creates a glowing halo through the textured clouds, with thinner wisps and darker cloud layers spreading across the deep blue-grey sky. A few faint stars are visible in the clearer areas of sky. Along the distant horizon, a band of city lights twinkles beneath the clouds, while the foreground is dominated by silhouettes of tall evergreen and deciduous trees, with scattered warm lights illuminating houses and gardens below.A close-up photograph of the Moon against a nearly black night sky, showing a waxing gibbous phase with most of the lunar disk illuminated and a narrow shadow along the left edge. Numerous craters, maria, ridges, and other surface features are visible across the bluish-grey lunar surface, with especially prominent dark maria on the right side. The illuminated limb is sharply defined, while the shadowed portion fades gradually into darkness. A faint bluish halo surrounds the Moon, and a small, wispy cloud partially overlaps the upper-left edge of the lunar disk.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
“Your body’s natural painkillers” is a cliché without much to it. A new meta-analysis of 67 opioid-blockade experiments: without endogenous opioids, pain rose only ¼ point on a 10-scale. 🤯 The one place they did matter? Placebo analgesia! Ironic. NEW POST, XXS: www.painscience.com/blog/not-so-...
painscience.com
Not so much natural painkilling going on
Pooling 67 opioid-blocking experiments: the body’s own opioids barely affect ordinary pain.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
2 more nights, 2 more moons: now gibbous waxing, 62% and 72%. That's five nights in a row now with no cloud and in a convenient location at a good time.
Closeup photo of the moon with extensive detail, especially crater rims on the terminator.  62% gibbous.Closeup photo of the moon with extensive detail, especially crater rims on the terminator.  72% gibbous.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This goes nicely with the last one. 🙂 ❤️ Also need to to hear this myself, because: "weakest moment" all week! Every chronic pain patient lives in fear because… "what if it gets worse?" Welp, mine did, 8 days ago. Unprecedented ferocity after 11 years of what now seem like warning shots. 🤬
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Love the mashup of Trek and mecical empathy here. 🙂 ❤️ And yeah, of COURSE Dr. Crusher would be an empathetic doc! First perfectly with the fantasy of a wise humanist future. A fantasy that seems more fantastical with every passing year. Sigh.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Third night in a row of a conveniently positioned waxing moon with good clear skies, 53% illumination now. I wonder if I'll get a fourth?
Closeup photo of a half moon (roughly 30x), showing fine detail in dozens of craters straddling the terminator.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The moon right now, close and far. The close-up comes from my Panasonic Lumix FZ80D (~30x zoom).
Close-up telephoto (near telescopic) photo of the moon, waxing crescent 40%.Wide angle shot of a sunet-glow on the horizon with trees and a building in the foreground, and a crescent moon.
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Reposted by PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham)
Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
No. No. No. Nooooo! 🛑 Full-body MRI a good idea? No! nationalpost.com/modern-life/... "Professional organizations such as the Canadian Association of Radiologists, among others, strongly oppose whole-body MRI screening in symptom-free people." > cost > anxiety > iatrogenic injury > system strain
nationalpost.com
Am I rich enough to pay for my own full-body MRI scan for peace of mind?
MRI scans are marketed by private clinics as a tool to detect diseases lurking inside asymptomatic bodies and cost upwards of around $3,000.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Most people get more flexible from #stretching …but how? Probably not by making soft tissues softer—now ruled out by a big new meta-analysis. Best remaining bet: we just learn to tolerate a harder pull. And yet still unproven! 🤷🏻‍♂️ NEW POST, audio for members: www.painscience.com/blog/stretch...
Dot-and-whisker chart of six effect sizes from Ingram et al. 2025. After weeks of regular stretching, stretch tolerance rises moderately (0.74) and stiffness falls slightly (0.37), while muscle fibre length does not change (0.07). A single session reduces stiffness a little (0.42) but changes neither tolerance nor fibre length.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Last week, desperately late to publish something (slave to my subscribers!), I was 95% done a big new blog post…when I discovered a deal-breaker and absolutely had to yeet it. Buh-bye, polished post! Hello, drawing board, I’m back!
static.klipy.com
The Shining: All Work and No Play
ALT: The Shining: All Work and No Play
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A PainSci bibliography historical highlight… Weppler & Magnusson 2010, my long-term go-to citation for how flexibility happens: stretch-tolerance. Ordinary stretching does NOT actually change anything physically. Soft-tissue doesn’t get softer. 🤯 www.painscience.com/biblio/flexi...
painscience.com
Flexibility gains via sensory change, not muscle length [PainSci Bibliography » Weppler 2010]
Four failed mechanical flexibility theories + one promising new one
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
A reader reported some embarrassing mistakes in my #homeopathy arnica article…in, yikes, 2014. I finally fixed them! 🦥 🐌 The errors were real, but the bottom line isn't: a microgram of arnica is still basically nothing. The corrections, and the story: www.painscience.com/blog/arnica-...
painscience.com
Homeopathic arnica: corrections and updates
Fixing an old article’s bad dose math and a missed failed replication, twelve years late.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
That “well, there’s your problem!” moment in massage: pressing a sore spot that "reproduces" your pain somewhere else. You found the CAUSE…right? Hm, might be the REVERSE, actually. Huge new member post, free intro with the basics: #referredpain www.painscience.com/blog/reverse...
painscience.com
Reverse referral: when sore spots are echoes, not causes (Member Post)
Referred pain does not tell a clear “secret cause of your pain” story.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Pseudoscience is like porn: you know it when you see it… IF you know enough real science to spot the mimicry. 🧐 Most clinicians were never taught anywhere near enough science — and what they are taught often actually crowds out what what they need. www.painscience.com/blog/pseudos...
painscience.com
Pseudoscience is like porn: you know it when you see it
Only if you can spot science mimicry — and most clinicians can’t.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Does adding weight 🏋🏻‍♂️ to back exercises help #backpain? An unusually clear answer from a decent (!) new review: nope. Heavier training built more muscle in these trials—with no pain payoff. Looks like strength isn't much of an active ingredient. www.painscience.com/blog/load-me...
painscience.com
Load me up? Adding weight to back exercises
Heavier back training builds more muscle, but not more pain relief.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
That too-good-to-be-true 2022 Pain Reprocessing Therapy study for #backpain? Still unreplicated…but the same team now reports a 5-year “lasting win.” 🙄 The actual long-term pain reduction vs doing nothing: 0.67 points out of 10. 😬 Receipts: www.painscience.com/blog/pain-re...
painscience.com
New long-term follow-up on worthless old Pain Reprocessing Therapy evidence
Bad evidence doesn’t improve with age — it just gets better at looking good.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
#Melatonin could plausibly help people with #chronicpain, by improving #sleep. Alas, a new review shows that it doesn’t get the job done. Might improve sleep slightly, but that does not appear to translate into pain relief. A bit more detail here (<1-min read): www.painscience.com/blog/melaton...
painscience.com
Melatonin is not a painkiller
A review of 23 trials: better sleep at best.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A reader sent me 7 scientific reviews “proving” platelet-rich plasma injections produce lasting results for knee #arthritis. I’m sure you can guess what happened. 😏 TLDR: nope! Not even close. But I like to “show my work,” so here’s a new post all about it: www.painscience.com/blog/prp-for...
painscience.com
PRP for arthritic knees: a science update
A reader sent 7 reviews to prove it works long-term. They don’t.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Reiki is AURA massage, AKA “therapeutic touch”—actual touch not included. The active ingredient? "Energy"! Like the Force from Star Wars, or what Mr. Miyagi did to the Karate Kid's knee Magic is a wonderful storytelling device. 🙂 Misguided, yes. Evil? No. www.painscience.com/blog/in-defe...
painscience.com
In defence of reiki practitioners (yes, really)
Energy healers aren’t con artists — they’re true believers, like I once was. On skeptical civility.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
⚠️ “Trolls climbing up my spine with ice axes!” ⚠️ “A ball of needles stabbing me with every breath!” ⚠️ “The ground I’m walking on is made of spears!” Real examples of “intrusive mental imagery” in people with #chronicpain. Got your own IMIs? 😜 I sure do. www.painscience.com/bibliography...
Screenshot of a study abstract with several highlighted phrases, mostly in yellow but one in red: “Multilevel modelling indicated that IMI vividness, emotional intensity, and valence were significant predictors of postimage pain.”  The paper is titled, “A prospective diary study of chronic pain-related intrusive mental imagery: 'trolls climbing up my spine with ice axes' and other vivid images.”
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
An immense new review of exercise for pain has landed. It sounds like good news … but I am not so sure. After just a little a cynical adjustment, there might not be much left of the result, which isn’t exactly huge to begin with. NEW POST, 2-min read: www.painscience.com/blog/immense...
painscience.com
An immense new review of exercise for pain
Once again, exercise isn’t exactly confirmed as a solution for pain.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
An immense new review of exercise for pain has landed. It sounds like good news … but I am not so sure. After just a little a cynical adjustment, there might not be much left of the result, which isn’t exactly huge to begin with. NEW POST, 2-min read: www.painscience.com/blog/immense...
painscience.com
An immense new review of exercise for pain
Once again, exercise isn’t exactly confirmed as a solution for pain.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
“Nature sounds are good for pain” is something many people just WANT to believe, to hell with the evidence. But an actually good new study does NOT support prescriptions of birdsong for #fibromyalgia. Nature sounds were actually WORSE than silence. 🤯 NEW POST: www.painscience.com/blog/nature-...
painscience.com
City noise pollution may aggravate pain (and nature sounds don’t help)
Nature sounds didn’t beat silence for fibromyalgia in this trial—but urban noise did make it worse.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
This comic is satire — but only slightly sillier than some real pillow marketing. NEW POST today, all about what pillows can and cannot do for neck and shoulder pain … www.painscience.com/blog/pillow-...
Satirical black-and-white advertisement for the “Tactical Pillow ZZZ-9000,” drawn in a vintage comic style, with the slogan “Engineered for victory. Delivered by dawn.” Cloud-shaped callouts tout absurd features: “Ergonomic Dominance Core,” “Perfectly aligned or you don’t pay,” “Climate Dominance Fabric,” “Patented Yawn Optimizer,” “Wake up more manly,” “Silently judges your sleep posture,” “Military-grade sleep foam,” and “Reduces sleep inertia by 92.7%” — with fine print confessing “we made this number up.”
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Freezing shoulders enjoy steroids … PRP not so much! A new trial from Taiwan with a respectable design and a believable result has compared platelet-rich plasma (PRP), corticosteroids (CS), and a saline placebo for shoulders in the agonizing FREEZING stage of frozen shoulder. What happened?
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Ibuprofen just barely works for kids in acute pain from injuries…and adding acetaminophen or an opioid doesn’t help. 😮 In any combo, they’re all in modest “takes the edge off” territory, less than a couple points on 10-scale. www.painscience.com/bibliography...
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
#Stretching for #fibromyalgia: abstract versus full text! The abstract for Støve et al. makes it sound like stretching eased fibromyalgia symptoms… but the full text reveals a study so warped that it backfires and actually suggests no effect at all. NEW POST: www.painscience.com/blog/stretch...
ide-by-side meme comparing scientific abstracts to full papers using a pizza. Left panel, captioned “When you just read the abstract,” shows a closed pizza box with a window revealing what appears to be a generously pepperoni-covered pizza. Right panel, captioned “When you read the whole thing,” shows the opened box revealing a cheese pizza with only three pepperoni slices clustered near the centre — implying that the abstract gave a misleadingly favourable impression compared to the full paper.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Now that's some demure and mindful watermelon eating. My vote for best comment? "Find someone who looks at you the way Reggie looks at watermelon." 🤣
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Study says just 6m of daily home stretching for 6 weeks reduced #fibromyalgia symptoms by ~18%. Not quite “huge” if true, but good, cheap, no major flaws in the abstract, so…should I put that in my anti-stretching pipe and smoke it? Not today. 😏 NEW POST: www.painscience.com/blog/stretch...
Photograph of a woman in “child’s pose” in her living room. Right beside her, a golden lab is in a nearly identical pose, looking bored and sleepy.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Recently I posted about how you can juuust make a living by “telling the truth to people who want it”…but you’ll go broke if you try it with those who don’t…and it’s hard to tell the difference! And I lose subscribers because I eventually publish something that triggers them. Fresh example! 🧵
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Just rewrote my recent “stretching doesn’t always feel good” post…100% powered by reader comments, all from folks with fibromyalgia and hypermobility/EDS: “It just hurts too much!” “I hit the end range of my joint miles long before I feel any stretch.” www.painscience.com/post_stretch...
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
This is character Ryland Grace in the novel Project Hail Mary, demanding more painkillers from the computer on the Hail Mary spacecraft. This is not included in the PainSci quote collection for any serious reason, just pure whimsy…but I take my whimsy seriously! 😉
Screenshot of a quote from the novel Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: “My arm hurts nonstop now. It’s a constant sting. It’s been less than an hour, but the painkillers aren’t doing the job anymore. ¶ ”Computer! Painkillers!“ ¶ ”Additional dose available in three hours and four minutes.“ ¶ I frown. ”Computer: What is the current time?“ ¶ ”Seven-fifteen P.M., Moscow Standard Time.“ ¶ ”Computer: Set time to eleven P.M. Moscow Standard Time.“ ¶ ”Clock set complete.“ ¶ ”Computer: painkillers.“ ¶ The arms hand me a package of pills and a bag of water. I gobble them down. What a stupid system. Astronauts trusted to save the world but not to monitor their painkiller doses? Stupid.”
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
“But stretching feels soooo gooooood!” I have heard that every time I’ve ever published anything that undermines bad beliefs about stretching (and there are plenty to undermine). But #stretching doesn’t feel good for EVERYONE…and sometimes it even feels BAD. Nausea! Fainting!
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This quote obviously resonates with a lot of people, but I am going to pull rank: it resonates with me MORE as an independent science journalist. Sometimes I feel like I am mostly earning a living from the customers I haven’t pissed off yet. 😜 More: www.painscience.com/blog/three_w...
Quote: There are three ways to make a living: 👉🏻 Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich. 👉🏻 Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living. 👉🏻 Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
The injured always want to know WHY ME? And science rarely has a satisfying answer. But today it can tell you at least this much: Achilles tendinitis probably CAUSES gait glitches, and NOT the other way around. Details: www.painscience.com/blog/achille...
Screenshot of the first page of the full-text PDF for Jandacka et al. with highlighting. It’s too much text for here, but some of the key phrases highlighted: “followed for 1 year using a Fitbit device and a custom mobile application” … “biomechanical variables included ankle, knee and hip kinematics and kinetics during the stance phase” … “identified a lower peak ankle inversion moment, a lower peak ankle external rotation angle and a greater running volume as significant predictors of the onset of Achilles tendinopathy” … “Previous research has highlighted biomechanical factors… however, evidence has predominantly been limited” … “other biomechanical parameters, such as footfall pattern, do not significantly influence the risk of Achilles tendinopathy, challenging common recommendations to alter running footfall pattern.”
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
People aren’t limited to believing quackery works: the human capacity for wishful thinking is so potent that countless people in history have “sworn by” dangerous snake oils even as they were being slowly destroyed by them. ☠️ Truly “no imposition is too great for the credulity of men” (Thoreau).
Nicely typeset quote, white text in a large attractive font on a blue gradient background: "Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal and universally successtul. In this case, it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great too great for the credulity of men." Attributed to Henry David Thoreau
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Ineffective treatments are often prescribed LONG after being spanked by science—about a DECADE, and sometimes much longer. Yikes. 😬 Epidural steroid injection (ESI) for #backpain is a prime example. NEW POST, big, members only (but a beefy free intro): www.painscience.com/blog/enough-...
painscience.com
Enough with the gratuitous spinal steroid injections already (Member Post)
Injections don’t help most back pain long-term, but the evidence is less-bad for sciatica
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
If only ignorance were just a neutral absence of knowledge, a void to be patiently filled with good information as it becomes available. But ignorance is not a vacuum: our gaps fill up with ILLUSIONS of knowledge, beliefs that aggressively displace the real thing, like a predator mimicking its prey.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I highlight a lot of things as I read, but I almost never go back and look at what I highlighted. I finally got around to trolling through several YEARS worth of quotes, and I was rewarded with several gems like this one.
A quotation set in a nice font: "Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective — even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth."  Attributed to the Area X Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Many factors affect pain, but the burden of "intensity × duration" is arguably in a class by itself and needs emphasis. www.painscience.com/blog/mild-pa... (Same post as yesterday, but upgraded: better graph, a big new footnote, a particularly relevant new citation I missed on the first pass.)
painscience.com
Mild pain that never ends isn’t actually mild
Duration multiplies pain intensity, so chronic pain is usually undersold by rating its intensity alone.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Pain isn’t actually “mild” if it never stops. Persistence can turn a small pain into a nightmare. Duration MULTIPLIES the intensity! But we try to quantify #chronicpain intensity without duration? 🤦🏻‍♂️ www.painscience.com/blog/mild-pa...
A complex line chart comparing pain intensity over time for three conditions—toe stub, tension headache, and chronic low back pain—on a compressed horizontal time scale ranging from seconds to 7 days. The vertical axis shows pain intensity from 0 to 10, the bog standard "pain scale." A red curve for toe stub spikes sharply to just over 8/10 within seconds, then falls quickly to zero by about 10 minutes, creating a small shaded area. An orange curve for tension headache rises much more gradually, peaking at 6/10 after a few hours, then tapers back to zero over a day, creating a much broader shaded area. A blue curve for chronic low back pain begins rises to about 4/10 over a day, and remains fairly steady through several days (and perhaps much longer, it continues off the graph), with minor fluctuations, creating the largest shaded area. The visual emphasizes that although chronic low back pain is lower in intensity than the other examples, its long duration produces the greatest total pain burden. Beneath the chart, summary labels read: toe stub, approximately 2 minutes, peak 8/10, total burden low; tension headache, approximately 6 hours, peak 6/10, total burden moderate; chronic low back pain, continuous, peak 4/10, total burden vast.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Is a story about being “abused” at a #chronicpain clinic believable? It’s all too easy to believe. Some pain rehab clinics have serious patient-blaming problems. NEW POST, 3-minute read.
painscience.com
Pain rehab’s patient-blaming problem
The Mayo Clinic’s Pain Rehabilitation Center (PRC) program is a well-known, decades-old interdisciplinary pain…
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
“Maybe this pain treatment won’t work any miracles! But…every little bit helps, AMIRIGHT?” Ackshually, not every little bit helps—not even close. First: it may not help even a “little.” Second: even if it does, it may not be a good VALUE… NEW POST, 3m read. www.painscience.com/blog/every-l...
Black-and-white single-panel cartoon in a loose, sketchy pen-and-ink style. Two women sit cross-legged on yoga mats in a simple wellness studio, facing each other and chatting. The woman on the left looks slightly frazzled, with messy hair, motion lines, and one hand raised as she talks while holding a mug in the other hand. The woman on the right listens calmly, holding a water bottle. Around them are a candle, potted plants, rolled mats, shelves with books and bowls, and a small Buddha statue. A wall poster lists numerous wellness activities such as meditation, sound bath, breathwork, journaling, moon ceremony, and digital detox. Caption below: “I never have time to cook a healthy meal or go for a walk! I’m too busy with all my other wellness practices.”
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Those who reject the alleged arrogance of authority and expertise mostly just replace it with the ACTUAL arrogance of believing they know better.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Every now and then I encounter someone who seems unusually keen on the idea of a whole body scan, almost worshipful, an unhealthy and unrealistic fascination — like they're on a pilgrimage to an oracle or a holy healing site. Naïve medicial tech worship. So odd.
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PainScience.com (Paul Ingraham) @painsci.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
2 new scientific reviews of cannabis for neuropathy… different conclusions about more or less the same data. Thought I’d have some good nerdy fun comparing and contrasting them. New short post for all + audio for members: PainScience.com/blog/two-new-reviews-of-cannabis-for-neuropathic-pain.html
painscience.com
Two new reviews of cannabis for neuropathic pain
One says “no clear evidence,” the other claims “modest” benefit.
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