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kaberett... and doesn't quite make it.
On page 187 (of 218), we finally get this paragraph:
At this point we need to return to a crucial caveat. In most cases of persistent pain, whatever caused the initial injury has healed. Pain is now the primary disease. But there are a number of cases where there is continual damage that triggers nociceptive fibres; chronic inflammatory diseases are good examples. It is also important to point out that not every case of back pain is our brain's overreaction. A small -- but important -- minority of cases are caused by serious conditions -- cancer, some infections, spinal fractures and the nerve-compressing cauda equina syndrome -- but these can usually be ruled out by doctors, who will be on the lookout for 'red flag' symptoms. However, in the majority of cases of persistent pain (and over 90% of cases of back pain), there is no longer any identifiable tissue damage; our brain has become hypersensitive.
In a book that otherwise dedicates a lot of time to talking about gender and racial inequalities in healthcare access, including a solid half-paragraph on how common and how painful endometriosis (a chronic inflammatory condition!) is, the bit where "well this only applies to most people..." gets breezed past is certainly causing me more feelings. And yet it's still the closest anything I've read so far actually gets to engaging with the fact that the rest of us exist, so... no get-out-of-writing-essays-free card for me here, alas.
(The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, mostly pretty good and definitely got me to think constructively about a few things -- like the merits of classical vs contemporary Pilates for my specific usecase via discussion of knitting -- and introduced me to some more, like open-label placebos and "safe threats" and the impact of paracetamol on empathy. It's incomplete, but not disrecommended.)
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Date: 2025-09-20 07:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-09-20 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-09-20 08:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-09-20 09:32 pm (UTC)https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/exciting-new-research-sheds-light-on-heds-biology/
"[new research] showed that hEDS and HSD share many underlying features, with important differences from people without these conditions.
They identified four main areas of change:
[snip]
Tissue healing and nerve signals for pain – systems for repair and pain control may not function as expected."
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Date: 2025-09-21 02:55 pm (UTC)Reading that paragraph was like looking at that screencap of a news show's infographic about generations, where it went "Boomers [dates], Millennials [dates], Gen Z [dates]" and you could SEE RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN that the dates between Boomers and Millennials did not join up and there had to be some other variable -- call it an X factor? -- in between the two. Except that time it was funny, and this one makes me want to scream.
the bit where "well this only applies to most people..." gets breezed past is certainly causing me more feelings.
INDEED.
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Date: 2025-09-21 08:33 pm (UTC)Like. The fact that /everyone/ breezes past this is WHY I WANT TO WRITE A THING, right, and I'm also quite lolsob that I am perpetually caught upon the horns of the dilemma that goes "it is infuriating that nobody is writing about this (because it obviously needs to happen and APPARENTLY it's GOTTA BE ME THAT DOES IT, which sounds like a lot of work--)" and "I'm scared that somebody has written about this (so there's no point in me doing so)"...
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Date: 2025-09-23 11:27 am (UTC)If you do find someone who has... it would seem that their work is so universally known and understood that there isn't room for another such work?
Anyway, two cakes!
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Date: 2025-09-23 09:27 pm (UTC)On the one hand, yes. On the other, singing its praises loudly is lyrically probably still easier than writing a whole book of my own :-p