Why do all such articles never talk about the meat of the solution? Why do I always feel like I'm being sold something.
Why is it so hard to explain the solution briefly, or directly present it to me upfront. Why does it need so much of mystery around it?
In this article the OP does not even mention "Pain reprocessing theory" which is what they seems to be talking about (based on the study they have linked)
Just woke up and this post's traction has surpassed my wildest imagination.
Similar to what pedalpete has said, I'm looking to release this in parts to ensure:
1. I am not overwhelming people and losing their interest
2. Quality remains as high as possible (I invested only a few hours into this last week as an experiment). I want this blog to be the most easily accessible, engaging + factual source for chronic pain sufferers. That requires sufficient time to nail (and it seems like I've struck a chord so far).
3. Get signals from readers week by week and tailor to the audience which is forming.
This will help me helpfully reach the most pain sufferers.
RE feel like you're being sold something. This series will cover what is needed to recover from chronic pain and be offered for free. I am looking to build a product eventually (why wouldn't I want help as many people as posssible while building a career which does good - I don't believe they're exclusive), but the information in this blog will remain free.
RE not calling out Pain reprocessing theory/therapy - I'll go through the post today and see if it makes sense to add this into #1 (or if it's better for #4). It's not something I consciously omitted when writting this post last week.
1. You've lost my interest with no "meat", as the GP stated.
2. There is no "quality" in using a couple thousand words of text to say "I'll be writing about what helped with my chronic pain over time".
3. Here's the signal: I am not in for "weekly" sessions. I do have chronic pain, but what you want to be producing is utterly incompatible with what I need.
here is what helped reduce my chronic neck pain: red meat (beef) with no side dish, eating healthy in general (and I mean truly healthy, not "oh one small candy bar every two days is proably okay..." no, it actually isn't. It's poison.) and exercise, a foam roller, bench press. Also definitely don't eat leafy greens, if you do that then you should stop in my opinion. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to truly eat perfectly. You can't make a single mistake or it will start the sickness cycle again. Not immediately but even a single piece of chocolate will make it so that the body is susceptible to further damage the next day. Then if I eat another piece the second day I'm really risking it and the damage left a hole in my health. I've had multiple instances where I ate a piece of cake and a donut and I was getting sickly with a hot head within 2h. I think it's hard to emphasize enough how important health is, it should be your top hobby to be healthy and eat healthy. It should be your nr.1 pasttime to research health and draw joy from doing health related things.
TBH I couldn't tell what the condition was or what general kind of treatment it was from the article without making big assumptions. Chronic pain is a symptom, viz. pain that doesn't go away after a short time. What was your disease? Or was it never given a name but the pain was treated?
Then I had to click a link "a landmark study" to get an idea of what the treatment is. Why not put the title of the treatment there?
Finally, that article is about back pain. But you had tendon pain. Obviously a psychological technique can be applied to multiple diseases, but you might say something about that.
Your reply seems disingenuous, like marketing-speak. You're telling people "I have a solution to your chronic pain" and then they read the article only to find out "tune in next week for the next bread crumb".
Chronic pain drives people to suicide. You're toying with people's emotions.
Hi algo_lover, I also noticed that about the post. The approach being discussed is "pain reprocessing therapy". It was described in a book called The Way Out, by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv. Here's my short summary of the book:
- Chronic pain is often generated by the brain, not any actual injury. Not always, but often. Especially if it gets worse during stress or high alert, and especially if the feeling of pain becomes connected to your fear of that same pain.
- In periods when pain is high, you need to kinda nurse it. Lie down, put warm water on it, whatever it takes. Don't try to power through the pain. Avoid situations where you have to power through.
- In periods when pain is moderate or low, take short sessions to examine it. "Ok, this isn't a threatening injury, this is just a sensation. Where is it located? What shape? Hot or cold? More dull or more like tingling?" Etc, etc. Don't hyperfocus, just explore the feeling in a light and curious way.
I found that a lot of advice for working with LLMs is based on asking good questions. This is also good advice for working with people, and for working with yourself.
As someone who has overcome chronic pain, and frequently foils acute pain from turning into chronic pain, I started daily joint-mobility exercises from Kelly Starrett's Supple Leopard book (and his MWOD videos on YouTube) to achieve this. Physical therapy needs daily, incremental progress, which you can do yourself.
I've been guilty of this myself for our neurotech sleeptech company, and I still owe HN a better blog post clarifying our positioning.
I think there are a few reasons you see this in health/medical community.
1) just helping people understand a different view of the problem is often enough for one blog post. Stuffing new way to look at solution and new solution together can sometimes be a bit much.
2) we have to be cautious from a regulatory perspective about what we say, and sometimes in being too cautious don't give the people who REALLY want to understaned the processes enough to go on. For our company, I used to say things like "we can increase the synchronous firing of neurons which results in reduced 15^% drop in early night cortisol, and 14.5% increase in hrv....".
But prior to regulatory approvals, we can't point directly to neurological or physiological processes, which means we kinda end up talking around the solution a bit.
3) in marketing, they want to connect and build an audience, so they are dripping more information over time. One post gets feedback and interest from one group, then you do another, and another. It's about building the community and connecting with people, not just a "here's a problem, do the thing, thanks". If you are trying to build a business, you probably need to get in front of people 7-8 times, particularly if you're taking a new approach to a problem, to build trust and brand recognition.
It's not the best, but it is the way the world works.
As someone who has been mitigating and managing chronic pain for 25 years, with respect IMO your expectation is unrealistic.
There isn't a "solution" - you're looking at a life-long mitigation and management strategy that will not be "brief".
The time commitment typically goes up as one ages. I could spend 40 hours a week on nutrition, exercise and relaxation if I was trying to optimize for chronic pain reduction.
> Why do all such articles never talk about the meat of the solution? Why do I always feel like I'm being sold something.
The topic itself is broad, but I agree that posts like this (please subscribe to my substack so you can get the info…) are almost always a prelude to some monetization play that comes later.
In this case, there are numerous existing resources on the topic (as linked by others already) from people with actual academic research experience in the topic that could have been linked in the post.
The claim about having quit a tech job and sold his house to “work on chronic pain” is also a giveaway that some monetization motives are at play.
I’m not opposed to people earning money from their work, but everyone reading this should know that monetization motives inevitably conflict with giving you the best access to information. The more you get from existing resources, the less interested you will be in following this specific author and paying for whatever products or services they are pushing.
Why is it so hard to explain the solution briefly, or directly present it to me upfront. Why does it need so much of mystery around it?
In this article the OP does not even mention "Pain reprocessing theory" which is what they seems to be talking about (based on the study they have linked)