Airing Pain 146: Irritable Bowel Syndrome & Inflammatory Bowel Disease       This edition of Airing Pain focuses on two conditions affecting the gut: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Both affect the digestive system, and both cause pain. In this episode we learn about what separates these outwardly similar sounding conditions, how they are diagnosed, and what treatments might be available.     Dr David Bulmer discusses the key differences and...

Coming 9th October:  This edition of Airing Pain focuses on Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) – two outwardly similar sounding conditions, but the devil is in the details.  Our contributors are experts on visceral pain, gastrointestinal disease, and psychological factors affecting chronic conditions; find out what they have to say in the latest edition of Airing Pain, coming soon.    The interviews were recorded at the British Pain Society’s Annual...

Airing Pain 145 Rethinking Pain: Pain Management in the Community  This edition of Airing Pain centres on rethinking the traditional clinician-patient relationship in pain management and exploring alternative approaches to bringing pain management back into the community.   Dr Barbara Phipps, GP and Lifestyle Medicine expert, discusses the development and benefits of group consultations for pain management.  Dr Jackie Walumbe sheds light on the pervasive inequalities in chronic pain...

Coming 14th August: This edition of Airing Pain centres on rethinking the traditional clinician-patient relationship in pain management and exploring alternative approaches to bringing pain management back into the community.   Is the 1-to-1 doctor-patient consultation the best we can do? How can we help people to feel more empowered in managing their own pain? Our contributors are experts in pain management, research, and community engagement; find out what they have to say in the latest...

Airing Pain 144: Dilemmas in Pain Research  This episode of Airing Pain focuses on the challenges that researchers must overcome when researching pain and developing new treatment approaches. Many questions remain unanswered in the field of pain research. For example, we might know that a treatment works for some people living with pain, but we might not know how it works or why some people benefit and some do not.  So, there is a lot of research being done to try to better understand...

Coming 12 June: This edition of Airing Pain focuses on the dilemmas and roadblocks that researchers encounter when researching pain and developing interventions, how they may overcome them, and why systematic reviews of research are so important. Our contributors for this edition are leaders in this field and they discuss some of the issues they have encountered whilst conducting their research into pain and how to treat it.  Interviews in this edition were recorded at the British Pain...

This edition of Airing Pain focuses on the treatment of pain, the importance of catering treatment to a person’s individual genetic makeup, and why addressing the psychological dimensions of pain is crucial in treating it effectively.  The process of finding a medication or treatment that works for a person often involves a lot of trial and error, which can be a frustrating process for someone to go through. This process can be side-stepped through the use of personalised medicine, where...

Coming 10 April: This edition of Airing Pain focuses on the treatment of pain, the importance of catering treatment to a person’s individual genetic makeup, and why addressing the psychological dimensions of pain is crucial in treating it effectively.   Our contributors for this edition discuss the ways in which the treatment of pain can be made more effective for people by incorporating personalised medicine or psychological treatments into a person’s care plan.  This edition will be...

In this edition of Airing Pain, Paul investigates the significant inequalities and disparities in treatment among primary care pain management services.

This edition of Airing Pain sheds light on the unique challenges of living with cancer as a child or young adult, and the later impacts of the cancer treatment they underwent during the critical formative years. Airing Pain speaks to experts on the longitudinal impacts of cancer for these age groups; across medical, physical, and psychosocial.   Pain and fatigue are commonly reported as the most significant negative impact on quality of life when living with cancer. Until quite recently...

This edition of Airing Pain is on the topic of early childhood experiences.   (Content warning: includes abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction)  The World Health Organisation states that ‘adverse childhood experiences (ACE) can have lifelong consequences on a person’s health, and well-being, and can lead to a person developing persistent pain in later life’. A lot of this research is conducted in adults, and of course with changes in attitudes and beliefs surrounding raising children over...

This edition of Airing Pain was recorded at the Living Well with Persistent Pain in Wales conference during Pain Awareness Month in September 2023. The topic of the conference was the launch of the revised Persistent Pain guidance first published in 2019.  The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we live and access services. How are healthcare professionals who treat patients with persistent pain capitalising on this improved digital literacy by using a digital-first approach to improve the...

Is self-compassion a trait or a state of being? This edition is inspired by findings that suggest stronger self-compassion is associated with reduced impact of chronic pain. Self-compassion, in this sense, is the ability to respond to pain and difficulties with kindness and openness rather than criticism. In this episode we ask our artistic contributors, and ourselves, how to step towards achieving self-compassion and the importance of movement in looking after our bodies.  This edition of...

This edition discusses the challenges and opportunities of de-prescribing; and poses a shift in focus towards supported self-management and de-medicalising the management of pain for some patients.

This edition of Airing Pain platforms four internationally recognised clinicians from the British Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting.

This edition of Airing Pain examines how Covid-19 has impacted on the relationship between patient and healthcare professional.

Warwick Study of Mental Defeat in Chronic Pain What is mental defeat and does it have an impact on the experiences of those living with pain? In this edition of Airing Pain, Paul Evans interviews the team at the Warwick Study of Mental Defeat in Chronic Pain (WITHIN Project) and research participants, as well as taking part in the study as a participant himself.

How the symptoms of long COVID are being managed using group consultations and the many things long COVID has in common with other long-term conditions. Now that COVID has become a part of our day-to-day lives, so too has long COVID. So, with so much money now being directed towards researching treatments for long COVID, how might this impact the way we treat all manner of chronic conditions? In this episode of Airing Pain, Paul Evans interviews the team at the Berkshire Pain Clinic, who...

How do you identify illness in young children and coping as a family. This Airing Pain was recorded at the Scottish Network for Arthritis in Children SNAC’s 2022 Family Weekend at Crieff Hydro, which brings together families recently affected by juvenile idiopathic arthritis and some of the country’s leading paediatric rheumatology experts.  Issues covered in this programme include: juvenile idiopathic arthritis, autoimmune disease, coping as a family, rheumatology, paediatrics,...

In this episode of Airing Pain we cover facial pain in its many forms, what treatments are available and how to cope better with your pain.

Scotland’s Pain Management Programmes (PMPs) and what support is available after graduating. This edition of Airing Pain has been funded by a grant from the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland Self Management Fund  administered on behalf of the Scottish Government. What do you know about Pain Management Programmes (PMPs)? Do you know how they function? About the positive outcomes they have? Do you know if there are any PMPs near you? In this episode of Airing Pain we learn...

Determining what Shingles really is and why vaccine uptake is so low? This edition of Airing Pain has been funded by a grant from The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust and The Stafford Trust What exactly is Shingles? We often hear it thrown into conversation alongside a virus many of us have already had: Chickenpox. So how are the two linked? Why is one more associated with young people and the other with older people? The answer is they are both infections caused by the...

Looking into one of the most globally prevalent types of pain, back pain, and exploring different cultural attitudes towards pain. This edition of Airing Pain was created in association with the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and has been funded by the Plum Trust.Back pain is one of the most common types of pain that people report. It can arise due to any number of causative factors and can occur in any part of the back. Lower back pain and Sciatica are particularly...

Issues covered in this programme include: Insomnia and sleep clinics, burning and gnawing pain, pain signals, biomechanics, stress, analgesia, bradykinesia, gabapentin, pregabalin, managing chronic pain and Parkinson's disease.