Introducing Practical Pain Science News

This newsletter was created in order to fill the large gap for providers working with patients in pain in
the musculoskeletal field—primarily physical therapy. Providers learn about pain but education in the
healthcare field continues to focus on tissue or structure as the main cause of pain in the
musculoskeletal system. Recent research in the past 10 years has shown that nociception (tissue-based
cause of pain) is only 1 reason a patient experiences pain and it is often not the primary cause for those
that are experiencing persistent pain. Being able to accurately diagnose and treat patients with
nociplastic pain is not being well taught in schools or being made clear as to how to do this in day-to-day
clinical practice.

I have been treating patients utilizing pain science for the past 11 years and in that time, I have worked
with hundreds of patients as well as trained multiple practitioners to be better diagnosticians and have
more successful treatment of patients with persistent pain.

The number of patients in pain is growing and our treatments are not stemming the tide. There is a real
need for more providers to be better at diagnosing and treating patients with nociplastic pain in order to
prevent the ‘revolving door’ effect where the patients continue to come back for the same diagnosis or
even worse, go get seen by many other providers without success.

I created this newsletter to help fill the gap, even a little bit, by sharing my clinical experiences, giving
suggestions for treatment, wading through some of the research and hopefully helping providers be
better at treating patients with persistent pain.

Enjoy!

Editor: Dr. Orit S Hickman PT DPT TPS
Launch Date 1/18/24