Researchers recently discovered that persons suffering from lumbago (low back pain) alter their movements because they fear possible back pain. Researchers believe that this behavior can contribute to acute low back pain becoming chronic. Essentially, "[t]hey are trapped within a vicious circle: fearing the suffering linked to movement, they lose their mobility, and the pain persists." Most interesting was the fact that patients in the study felt less pain when researchers told them they were going to feel less pain even when the pain stimulus being applied was higher. As the author of the article points out, "it seems that the first pain-reliever to be administered to a patient suffering from acute lumbago should be a generous dose of reassuring words, in order to prevent the illness from becoming chronic."This is potentially an important development for the medico-legal world because the costs of surgical intervention on worker's compensation and personal injury claims are staggering and any method for helping patients manage acute low back pain to prevent it from becoming chronic would represent a huge cost savings.
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