Explain Pain

Explain Pain is one of the few books that I have in the clinic with me at all times (unless I’ve lent it out to a patient). It is written by two of the world’s leading physiotherapists in pain education, David Butler and Lorimer Moseley. David should be familiar to all physical therapists, as his work has significantly advanced our understanding of neurogenic pain, and his Sensitive Nervous System moved past the more peripheral focus of his Mobilisation of the Nervous System to include more of a focus on central pain mechanisms. The most impressive thing I can say about Lorimer Moseley is that I only have an automatic literature search set up for one person, and he’s it – his work is important enough that I hate to miss any of it. I plan to review several of his articles in the future. They’re also both tremendously nice guys, who have helped me out several times on some small projects. This book takes modern pain neuroscience and applies it in an understandable way – no small task – with some rather unorthodox drawings to help accentuate the ideas.

I first heard about this book on several physical therapy websites, when therapists were describing their understanding and management of painful conditions in ways that I had never heard. Since reading this book and applying the principles with patients with various painful conditions, I had the great experience of a well-educated and experienced co-worker coming to me during some down time to ask “What are you saying to those people?” He was able to see the impact that the specific pain education was having. I lent him my copy of the book, he devoured it, and neither of us has been treating patients the same way since. Sometimes our patients accuse us of being more psychologists than physical therapists, but they are often grateful to have someone explain these concepts to them, and my co-worker and I can’t understand how we made it this far as physical therapists without this information.

There is a video below that the two authors made to recognize the five year anniversary of the book, taken from the Neuro Orthopaedic Institute website. I can’t recommend it highly enough. There is an Explain Pain course coming to Baltimore May 2008 – maybe I’ll see you there.