Conversations About Everyday Pain
These are frank and sometimes raw discussions with regular people just like you - sharing genuine experiences with aches and pains.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 15, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 7, 2026
Latest episodes
Your Pain is Not a Diagnosis (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Episode summary After two weeks on the words other people use about your body, Dr. Ya-Ling turns to the ones you supply yourself. Why "sciatica" is a street address rather than a diagnosis, why verdicts like "my back is shot" end an investigation before it starts, and how describing pain with adjectives instead of nouns gets you more accurate care, sooner. Includes a full introduction to the Five S's of Better Pain Coping. In this episode • Verdicts and labels: two different ways a sentence fore
Does This Feel Safe? (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Episode summary In a trial of a thousand adults with back pain, researchers trained clinicians on which sentence to say out loud — "this is safe" rather than "this won't hurt you." Dr. Ya-Ling covers what the trial found, then turns to the practical question: what you're actually allowed to say, ask and expect the next time you're sitting in an appointment. In this episode • The PACBACK trial in brief: supported self-management outperformed standard medical care, and adding manipulation to it ad
When a Medical Label Gets Inside Your Head (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Episode summary ""Degeneration." "Bone on bone." "Just wear and tear." Patients mention these in passing, quoting something a doctor said years ago about an X-ray they barely remember. Dr. Ya-Ling explores what happens when a medical label quietly becomes a belief about your body—and ultimately, about your future. She explains the overlooked connection between these words and the nocebo effect, why their impact can be so difficult to detect, and the one situation where a grim label can actually
What I Couldn't See in My Own Neck for Thirty Years (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Episode summary Dr. Ya-Ling tells the story of the neck pain that started when she was seven, came back for decades, and persisted through chiropractic school and years of practice before she understood it. This episode is about why none of us can reliably assess our own bodies, why that isn't a personal failing, and what it means when something finally does get loud enough to notice. In this episode • The morning she woke at seven or eight unable to lift her head, and the decades of recurrence
The Pain Alarm Messaging I Don't Agree With (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Episode summary Pain science often describes pain as a smoke detector that's become oversensitive. Dr. Ya-Ling explains where that idea is genuinely useful, why it doesn't apply to most of the pain she sees, and how applying it too early may help create the very chronic pain it was meant to address. Along the way, the real explanation for morning back stiffness. In this episode • Why low back stiffness in the morning often isn't coming from the low back • Two overlooked contributors: inflammator
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.