Bearing in mind that the number of medical injections might soon be increasing, and that some find them painful, a question can arise – ‘What are the options for minimizing the pain of a medical injection?’ Have you considered holding a chopstick in your mouth (to induce a fake smile) or maybe grimacing? Sarah Pressman, […]
Tag: Pain
Facial Pain and the Instruments of Finnish Orchestra Musicians
Aki Savolainen writes: “I found this one article my father was working on a year ago, which found out that musicians with sleep bruxism experience pain related to the severity of their symptoms (surprise), and the instrument they happen to be playing has no effect on the amount of pain experienced.” The study is: “Oro-facial […]
Effect of swearing on strength and power performance (study)
Dr Richard Stephens, of Keele University, UK, was a co-recipient of the 2010 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain. Since then, his work on swearing has continued, and he’s the lead author of a 2018 paper for the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise (Volume 35, March 2018, Pages […]
Placebos (can) work even when you don’t use them [new study]
The mysterious workings of the Placebo Effect have taken a new twist. A research team from Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and The University of Toledo, US, have found, by experiment, that a placebo cream (that’s to say a faux medical cream with absolutely no active ingredients) can be quite effective even when it’s not used. “We […]
The farmer, his neuropathic pain and the cow fence
Documented improbable electrical treatments for pain relief are not restricted to shocks from the Nile Catfish. ‘An interesting Case’ is described by Professor Jock Murray of the Division of Neurology, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada, in which he relates the bespoke treatment that a Canadian farmer had developed for alleviating constant pain in his leg. […]
The analgesic effects of dancing in synch (study)
Can dancing to PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ in sync with other dancers act as a kind of ‘analgesic ’ – by raising your threshold to pain? A 2016 research project from the Department of Experimental Psychology, at the University of Oxford, UK, suggested that the answer might be ‘Yes’. A suite of somewhat painful [*see notes] […]
“Swearing helps us battle pain – no matter what language we curse in”
A replication (with Japanese-language speakers and English-language speakers) of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize-winning experiment (with only English-language speakers) about swearing and pain, described by one of the researchers, in The Conversation: Swearing helps us battle pain – no matter what language we curse in The new study is “Swearing as a response to pain: A […]
The ‘Champagne Toast Position’ test – a new diagnostic method for shoulder pain
The photo above depicts the newly developed ‘Champagne Toast Position’ test for examining the electromyographic activity of the supraspinatus muscle. A research team from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, US, developed the test as a more effective alternative to Jobe’s test (a.k.a. the Empty Can Test) . . . The […]
Ig Nobel Prize-winning swearing research wins best science book prize
Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad, a new book by Richard Stephens, is the British Psychological Society’s Book Award winner — in the category Popular Science. The BPS’s Book Awards have just been announced. In the year 2010, Richard Stephens and two colleagues were awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing […]
Ig Nobel winner Justin (sting pain index) Schmidt profiled in NY Times
Justin Schmidt, whose thorough love of insects led him to many good things, including an Ig Nobel Prize, is profiled in the New York Times Magazine: The 2015 Ig Nobel Prize, in the combined category of Physiology and Entomology, was awarded jointly to two individuals: Justin Schmidt, for painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which […]