The equivalent of several books of reading is at your fingertips here. Get comfy!
410+ Articles About Your Aches & Pains
This is an index for the 422 articles and 8 tutorials published on SaveYourself.ca — well over a million words of about pain problems, pain science, manual therapy, and much more, 95% of it free to all visitors. All content is written for both patients and professionals, but 93 articles are likely to be of particular interest to doctors and therapists (see the SaveYourself.ca Reading Guide for Professionals). Fresh content is always showcased on the front page of the site. For a bird’s eye view of key site pages, see the site directory.
Categories
- Tutorials For Common Pain Problems
- New!
- Review, Reality Checks and Debunkery
- Self-Treatment Tips, Tricks and Concepts
- Exercise
- Therapy And Therapies
- The Perfect Spots
- Biological Literacy
- Mind-Body Connections
- Oddballs And Misfits
Keep track of new stuff on SY by RSS, Facebook, or Twitter.
Tutorials for Common Injuries and Chronic Pain Problems
For help with a specific problem, choose from this list of common problems. The ones marked with li‘l books (
)
are much more substantial (some of them are huge). In fact, several are the best guides available anywhere, offering vastly more information than any text, but user-friendly.
Save Yourself from Low Back Pain!- Save Yourself from Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome!
- Save Yourself from Neck Pain!
- Save Yourself from Plantar Fasciitis!
- Save Yourself from Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome!
- Save Yourself from Shin Splints!
- Save Yourself from IT Band Syndrome!
- Save Yourself from Muscle Strain!
- Save Yourself from Tension Headaches!
- Save Yourself from Tennis Elbow!
- Save Yourself from Insomnia!
- Save Yourself From Sciatica!
New!
I never stop improving every article and tutorial on SaveYourself.ca. As I work, I publish whatever I’m working on: research news, new tips and resources, quotes, myth busting … anything that can be used to update and upgrade anything else on the website. These are the last 25 posts. Older posts can only be found by searching.
Review, Reality Checks and Debunkery
The most important idea on this website is that the science of pain and injury is still remarkably primitive. An amazing number of popular therapies are either unproved or disproved. I deflate dogma, hinder hype, and critique quackery. It’s a fun and thought-provoking ride — sassy, but also scholarly.
- Does Traumeel Work? — A detailed review of Traumeel®, a homeopathic remedy (not herbal) widely used for muscular pain, joint pain, sports injuries, bruising, and post-surgical inflammation
- (Almost) Never Use Ice on Low Back Pain! — An important exception to conventional wisdom about icing and heating
- Quite a Stretch — Stretching research clearly shows that a stretching habit isn’t good for warmup, injury prevention, preventing or treating muscle soreness, enhancing athletic performance … or even flexibility!
- Does Massage Therapy Work? — A review of the science of massage therapy … such as it is
- Stand Up Straight — A detailed exploration of concepts in posture and posture exercises
- Does Acupuncture Work for Pain? — Evidence now clearly shows that acupuncture can’t help people with common chronic pain problems, especially low back pain and neck pain
- The Power of Avogadro Compels You! — James Randi and Alexa Ray Joel try to poison themselves — one of them deliberately and the other accidentally making homeopathy look 10X sillier than it already did
- The Unstretchables — Ten major muscles you can’t stretch, no matter how hard you try
- The “Impress Me” Test — Most controversial therapies are fighting over scraps of scientific evidence
- Does Craniosacral Therapy Work? — Craniosacral therapists make big promises, but can’t agree on diagnoses and have failed to pass fair scientific tests of efficacy
- Thixotropy is nifty, but it’s not therapy — A curious property of connective tissue is often claimed as a therapy
- Wow, You’re Really Tight — The three most common words in massage therapy are pointless
- Ioannidis: Making Medical Science Look Bad Since 2005 — A famous scientific paper with an irresponsible and misleading title
- A Review of ART® Therapy — Concepts and controversies in Dr. Leahy’s “Active Release Techniques®” (ART) method of massage therapy for chiropractors
- Modality Empires — A tradition of ego-driven treatment methods in manual therapy
- A Review of Myofascial Release (MFR) Therapy — Concepts and controversies in one of the most popular of all styles of manual therapy
- Alternative to What? — “Alternative” health care professionals need to decide what they are really the alternative to
- You Can’t Beat DOMS! — The myth of treatment for nature’s little tax on exercise, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)
- Water Fever and the Fear of Chronic Dehydration — Do we really need eight glasses of water per day?
- The Humble Therapist — Why you need to be skeptical when your massage therapist, physiotherapist or chiropractor tells you where the pain is really coming from
- Extraordinary Claims — A guide to critical thinking, skepticism and smart reading about health care on the web
- Does Chiropractic Work? — Notes from a science-minded massage therapist who gets asked about it every day
- Do You Believe in Qi? — How to embrace a central concept of Eastern mysticism without being a flake
- Does “Lose the Back Pain” Actually Help Low Back Pain? — A review of the popular low back pain treatment system
- SSRI Antidepressants Are Not Medicine — Frightening side effects, cover-ups on the record, and no reason to believe they do what they are supposed to
- Stretching for Trigger Points EXCERPT — Is muscle knot release a good reason to stretch?
- Do Epsom Salts Work? — There is (still) no good reason to believe that Epsom salt baths aid recovery from muscle pain, soreness or injury
- Your Back Is Not “Out” and Your Leg Length is Fine — The story of the obsession with crookedness in the physical therapies
Self-Treatment Tips, Tricks and Concepts
Learn the basics of self-treatment for your own aches, pains and injuries.
- Mobilizing! — An alternative to stretching that “massages you with movement”
- (Almost) Never Use Ice on Low Back Pain! — An important exception to conventional wisdom about icing and heating
- Icing for Injuries, Tendinitis and Inflammation — Become a cryotherapy master
- The ‘Use It Or Lose It’ Principle — The importance of stimulation and movement in healing
- Contrast Hydrotherapy — How to use hot and cold water to speed healing from injuries
- Posture Exercises for Posture Correction — Some techniques and strategies for correcting your posture … or should you even bother?
- A Better Hot Bath — Tips and tricks for getting the most out of the oldest form of therapy
- Injury and Pain Rehabilitation Tips — Thumbnail sketches of evidence-based rehabilitation and self-treatment strategies that I prescribe to my clients … and some I tell them to avoid
- Pain Is an Opinion — What discoveries in neurology can do for your chronic pain problem right now
- Strength Training and Injury Rehabilitation — Everything you need to know about strength training for rehab
- Microbreaking — Prevent low back pain and neck cricks with lots of little breaks
- The Great Ice vs. Heat Confusion Debacle — A quick guide that explains when to ice, when to heat, when not to, and why
- The Bath Trick for Trigger Point Release EXCERPT — A clever way of combining self-treatment techniques to self-treat your myofascial trigger points (muscle knots)
- Stretching for Trigger Points EXCERPT — Is muscle knot release a good reason to stretch?
- Using Heat for Pain Problems — When and how to apply heat for therapy … and when not to!
- Progressive Training — How to take “baby steps” to recovery from an injury or pain problem
- The Art of Rest — The finer points of resting for injury and pain rehabilitation
- Unconventional Ergonomics — Five creative ergonomics tips you don’t hear as much about as the usual stuff
- Tennis Ball Massage for Myofascial Pain Syndrome EXCERPT — Some creative tips on using an ordinary tennis ball and other massage tools to self-treat muscle knots and myofascial trigger points
- Friction Massage Therapy for Tendonitis — A guide to a simple self-massage technique often helpful in resolving tendonitis
- Wobble Cushion Technique — Instructions for chair warriors on the best usage of Disc ‘O’ Sit, Balance Fit or Sissel wobble cushions
- Basic Self-Massage Tips for Myofascial Trigger Points EXCERPT — Learn how to massage your own trigger points (muscle knots)
- Endurance Training for Injury Rehabilitation — What to do when your usual strength training workout isn’t working … or isn’t an option
- Hydrotherapy — An introduction to healing with water
- Collateral and Re-Injury Prevention — Don’t underestimate the importance of prevention … even after you’ve already been injured!
Therapy and Therapies
Articles about how various popular therapies work, or don’t, and some other approaches to healing that you may not have considered.
- Does Massage Therapy Work? — A review of the science of massage therapy … such as it is
- The Art of Bioenergetic Breathing — A powerful tool for personal growth and transformation
- Does “Lose the Back Pain” Actually Help Low Back Pain? — A review of the popular low back pain treatment system
- “But I’ve Already Tried Massage Therapy …” EXCERPT — The delicate issue of trying to find skilful treatment for myofascial trigger points (muscle knots)
- Measuring Progress in Massage Therapy EXCERPT — How do you know whether or not massage therapy is working for you?
- The Pressure Question in Massage Therapy EXCERPT — What’s the right amount of pressure to apply to your muscles in massage therapy and self-massage?
- Does Craniosacral Therapy Work? — Craniosacral therapists make big promises, but can’t agree on diagnoses and have failed to pass fair scientific tests of efficacy
- Does Acupuncture Work for Pain? — Evidence now clearly shows that acupuncture can’t help people with common chronic pain problems, especially low back pain and neck pain
- What’s the Harm? — Adverse effects of massage therapy
- Modality Empires — A tradition of ego-driven treatment methods in manual therapy
- A Review of Myofascial Release (MFR) Therapy — Concepts and controversies in one of the most popular of all styles of manual therapy
- Therapeutic Options for Pain Problems — A guide to therapies and medical professionals for injuries, chronic pain and other musculoskeletal problems
- Does Chiropractic Work? — Notes from a science-minded massage therapist who gets asked about it every day
- Personal Growth — The art of healing by growing up
- I See Muscle — Shining light on the muscle tissue blind spot
- Hydrotherapy — An introduction to healing with water
- Help for Anxiety — Anxiety doesn’t respond to logic and reason, so what does it respond to?
- The Trouble with Orthotics — A consumer’s guide to buying orthotics
- Why Massage Makes You Tingle — The physiology of sensation in muscle tissue
- Buyer (of Therapy) Beware — All other things being equal, always choose the cheapest and most comfortable therapeutic option for your pain problem
- Choose the Therapist, Not the Therapy — When you’re in pain, you want to know “what works,” but what you should look for is an honest therapist of any kind
- Why Massage Therapy? — An attempt to explain the magic of touch therapy, and why I decided to become an Registered Massage Therapist
- Battle of the Experts — A guide for patients caught between conflicting diagnoses and prescriptions
Choose your perfect spot!
Or, for general information and advanced tips about trigger point therapy, see Save Yourself from Trigger Points!
The Perfect Spots
So you want to learn to give a good massage? Here are the perfect spots: the most satisfying and therapeutically significant places on the human body to apply pressure.
- Spot 1 — Massage Therapy for Tension Headaches
- Spot 2 — Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain
- Spot 3 — Massage Therapy for Shin Splints
- Spot 4 — Massage Therapy for Neck Pain, Chest Pain, Arm Pain and Upper Back Pain
- Spot 5 — Massage Therapy for Tennis Elbow and Wrist Pain
- Spot 6 — Massage Therapy for Back Pain, Hip Pain and Sciatica
- Spot 7 — Massage Therapy for Bruxism, Jaw Clenching, and TMJ Syndrome
- Spot 8 — Massage Therapy for Your Quads
- Spot 9 — Massage Therapy for Your Pectorals
- Spot 10 — Massage Therapy for Tired Feet (and Plantar Fasciitis!)
- Spot 11 — Massage Therapy for Upper Back Pain
- Spot 12 — Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain (So Low That It’s Not In the Back)
- Spot 13 — Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain (Again)
and …
Exercising Inside and Out
Read these articles for an unusual blend of approaches to therapeutic exercise and rehabilitation.
- The Art of Bioenergetic Breathing — A powerful tool for personal growth and transformation
- The ‘Use It Or Lose It’ Principle — The importance of stimulation and movement in healing
- Mobilizing! — An alternative to stretching that “massages you with movement”
- Quite a Stretch — Stretching research clearly shows that a stretching habit isn’t good for warmup, injury prevention, preventing or treating muscle soreness, enhancing athletic performance … or even flexibility!
- Five Ways To Prevent Sports Injuries — Get warm, co-ordinated, relaxed, smart and mobilized!
- Posture Exercises for Posture Correction — Some techniques and strategies for correcting your posture … or should you even bother?
- Another Kind of Exercise — Alternatives to jogging and pumping iron
- Good Vibrations for Stress and Tension — How to shake your way to relief from stress, tension and more
- Kundalini Meditation — Stressed out? Blow off some steam with some weird exercise …
- Stand Up Straight — A detailed exploration of concepts in posture and posture exercises
- 7 Reasons Older Adults Don’t Stay in Exercise Classes — And 7 Reasons Why they Should
- Water Yoga — 5 unusual ways to use a swimming pool for therapeutic exercise
- Eccentric Contraction — A peculiar phenomenon in muscle physiology
- The Art of Rest — The finer points of resting for injury and pain rehabilitation
- Always Running the Same Way — The trouble with running on concrete and asphalt
- Stretching for Trigger Points EXCERPT — Is muscle knot release a good reason to stretch?
Biological Literacy (Biology and Anatomy)
Do you like to know how things really work? This section is for you. These articles are as educational as possible without actually losing their sense of humour.
- Dance of the Sarcomeres EXCERPT — A mental picture of muscle knot physiology explains four familiar features of muscle pain
- The ‘Use It Or Lose It’ Principle — The importance of stimulation and movement in healing
- Natural Imperfection — Evolution doesn’t care if you have back pain … just as long as you can breed
- Oh, a flow-induced system of mechanotransduction! Of course! — A century-old mystery of bone biology was solved just a little while ago
- Eccentric Contraction — A peculiar phenomenon in muscle physiology
- Stiffness, tightness and limited range of motion are not always the same thing — An interesting little thing to understand about your body
- We Are Full of Critters — The human body is a colony of ten trillion co-operating cells
- How Many Muscles? — A (slightly tongue-in-cheek) tally of the body’s many muscles
- The Sixth Sense — Proprioception, the vital but mysterious sensation of position and movement
- Ugly Bags of Mostly Water — The chemical composition of human biology
- An Introduction to Biological Literacy — Why you need to know more about your body
- What Hurts You — The strange science of pain perception
Mind-Body Connections
Everyone seems to agree nowadays that “you can’t separate the mind from the body” — but what does that mean, exactly?
- Why Do We Get Sick? — The connections between poor health and the lives we lead
- Do You Believe in Qi? — How to embrace a central concept of Eastern mysticism without being a flake
- Pain Is an Opinion — What discoveries in neurology can do for your chronic pain problem right now
- The Respiration Connection — How dysfunctional breathing might be a root cause of a variety of common upper body pain problems and injuries
- The Body Remembers — How your body can “store” emotional experience in your tissues, and experience them again during massage therapy
- Singing, Breath and Scalenes — Connections between singing, breathing and a strange group of muscles
- Something in the Air — A fascinating relationship between biology and the Schumman resonance
- The Anatomy of Vitality — What makes life tick? A poetic romp through the substance of vitality
- An Open and Closed Case — An explanation for a strange duality of muscle sensation observed in massage therapy
Oddballs and Misfits
Articles in this section are unusual and/or difficult to categorize …
- Dance of the Sarcomeres EXCERPT — A mental picture of muscle knot physiology explains four familiar features of muscle pain
- Natural Imperfection — Evolution doesn’t care if you have back pain … just as long as you can breed
- Into the Fire — Trigger point pain as a major injury complication, and how I finally “miraculously” healed from a serious and stubborn shoulder injury by untying the muscle knots
- Healer Syndrome — Therapists who think they are God’s gift to therapy
- My Very Own Athletic Injuries — A journal of my experiencesd with injuries acquired while running, cycling and hiking and playing ultimate for fifteen years
- Therapy Babble — Another warning sign of therapy of dubious quality
- At the Baths — A massage therapist’s observations at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre
- Will Therapy Work? — The fool’s errand of trying to guess the effectiveness of a therapeutic approach to a pain problem before you’ve tried it
- Does Hip Strengthening Work for IT Band Syndrome? — Despite its popularity, “weak hips” is a weak theory, and there is no compelling evidence that hip strengthening can treat or prevent running overuse injuries of leg
- Body Types and Body Pain — Some speculation about what kind of body types might hurt the most, with shameless use of cute dog photos to illustrate
- Wow, You’re Really Tight — The three most common words in massage therapy are pointless
- Confused about the location of Iliotibial Band Syndrome? — There is no such thing as “iliotibial band pain” that is not at the knee
- Why “Science”-Based Instead of “Evidence”-Based? — A short essay summarizing the rationale for the science-based medicine movement
- Insomnia Until it Hurts — The role of sleep deprivation in muscle pain
- A Short Story — Slow growth syndrome, oxandrolone and the pathologization of my height
- Something in the Air — A fascinating relationship between biology and the Schumman resonance
- The Anatomy of Vitality — What makes life tick? A poetic romp through the substance of vitality
- Personal Growth — The art of healing by growing up
- Extraordinary Claims — A guide to critical thinking, skepticism and smart reading about health care on the web
- Back Pain and Other Hazards of Sitting In Chairs (Way) Too Much — Recent personal experience proves that a lot of sitting actually is as risky as I’ve been telling my clients all these years
- The Respiration Connection — How dysfunctional breathing might be a root cause of a variety of common upper body pain problems and injuries
- The Still Life — The trouble with a lifestyle of inactivity
- An Open and Closed Case — An explanation for a strange duality of muscle sensation observed in massage therapy
- Do You Believe in Qi? — How to embrace a central concept of Eastern mysticism without being a flake
- Choose the Therapist, Not the Therapy — When you’re in pain, you want to know “what works,” but what you should look for is an honest therapist of any kind
- What Happened To My Barber? — Either atlantoaxial instability or vertebrobasilar insufficiency causes severe dizziness and vomiting after massage therapy, with lessons for health care consumers
- When To Worry About Shortness of Breath … and When Not To — A massage therapist explains common minor and treatable causes of a scary symptom
That’s all! If you want more, send me a bag of money, and I will write more just for you.