Thank you so much for writing this (and others for contributing)! It’s one of the most personally helpful things I’ve read this year.
PhilippaE
Karma: 3
To build on this, I want to emphasise on the role of education in the treatment of LBP. I recommend this article discussing the body of evidence on how pain-related beliefs can promote the transition of acute pain to chronic pain and disability. Interventions to reduce pain-related fear (and thus catastrophising, fear-avoidance and kinesiophobia), and their efficacy in reducing pain severity and disability are also discussed.
A bit of time spent familiarising yourself with these ideas seems to be a decent low-cost investment in your wellbeing and resillience. Alan Thrall has a few short accessible videos on back tweaks and, I agree, Barbell Medicine’s article on pain self-management is an excellent guide.
I see a big role of the community as being the facilitator of coordination. Tight coordination might enable more and better projects to be done, with less redundancy. It might also reduce beneficial competition & diversity of projects and ideas if people don’t pursue good projects because someone else is already in that space. Career advising seems like a good example of where different approaches can usefully coexist.