Michael Spackman, NMT, CMT

Pain may be described as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Foremost, pain is always subjective. Each of us learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life. Biologists recognize stimuli that cause pain are liable to cause tissue damage. However, many clients report pain in the absence of actual tissue damage....

Pain is inherently subjective anyway and, thus, difficult to study objectively. While I wish to stay clear of the scientific notions of pain here--others elsewhere in this issue do a better job anyway--we must notice one oddity of our neurology: there are no nerve endings specifically for pain, as there are for heat, cold, vibration, and pressure, for instance. Mostly, simple free nerve endings serve to send us those signals we read as pain.

DEBORAH WINCKLER, mental health therapist and doctoral candidate at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, started suffering from extreme back pain
caused by a series of accidents over the span of 20 years—a car accident, plummeting down a flight of stairs, a fall from a horse, and toppling onto a step in order to shield her 23-pound toddler from taking the brunt of a fall. She eventually underwent back surgery, but the ultimate result was that she could hardly walk because of severe back pain.  Winckler is not alone when it comes to back pain....

Arthritis is one of the most common chronic diseases in the United States, and this inflammatory condition frequently plagues the hands. It’s estimated that 1 in 5, or 46 million U.S. adults, live with arthritis today; and over 38 percent, or 17 million adults, report some limitation of their day-to-day activities because of this debilitating condition. 1 Several non pharmaceutical approaches have been proven to increase joint function and alleviate the pain associated with arthritis...

The knee is the largest, most mechanically complex weight-bearing joint in the body. It is the most vulnerable, too. Because of its function and structure, the knee is inherently unstable. It depends almost entirely on ligaments and the strong muscles that cross it to
hold it together and carry the weight of the body in motion. 

What can you do to help a client seeking relief from knee pain?  A review of the structure of the knee, and the common sources of knee pain, reveals ways that massage therapy can be of benefit...

Fresh Air - Oct 19, 2009

An estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals, parasites, bacteria or viruses, or fails to meet federal health standards. Part of the problem, says journalist Charles Duhigg, is that water-pollution laws are not being enforced.

Duhigg reports on the "worsening pollution in American waters" — and regulators' responses to the problem — in his New York Times series, "Toxic Waters." In researching the series, he studied thousands of water pollution records, which he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

Duhigg previously wrote about businesses' and investors' efforts to profit from the growing number of older Americans in his "Golden Opportunities" series for the Times. He is a regular contributor on NPR's Planet Money Blog.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113927993.