Biopsychosocial model

Today, we talked with Dr. Rachel Zoffness about what pain actually is, why your thoughts, feelings, and the environment have a bigger role than most people realize, and how we can use that information to create better ways to deal with pain.

We focused mostly during this conversation on the psychological and the social, two parts of the biopsychosocial model that we spend a good amount of time talking about today.

But that doesn't mean that the bio is not really, really important.

Particularly, please do not take this conversation as a reason to change any medication you might be taking without close consultation with your doctor.

Wow, they get ton of effect from it with minimal side effects.

How great.

So this took Rick and me to, "Huh, why don't you just do a little bit of everything?" And that is maybe a summary of the biopsychosocial model.

You know, maybe if you just try a little bit of everything, you will find the thing that for you, you get that bimodal response from.

We're not going to say, oh, it's because of this one specific thing.

We've got to look at the biopsychosocial model of pain.

That's where it begins.

Now, if Paul were to come to me and the first thing I'd say to him was, excuse me, sir, take your shirt off.

It's not a bad thing.

It's just a data point.

So we need to have a really strong foundation in the biopsychosocial model.

And that's just the assessment portion.

And as soon as we had that, the musculoskeletal problem started to fade away.

So you hit all three of those aspects of the biopsychosocial model of medicine and boom, nothing else was helping.

And you've kind of tackled it.

Real talk, the way I take care of my body has changed a lot over the years.

Exactly.

They are highly complex biopsychosocial phenomena.

Biopsychosocial, meaning the mind, the body, and the environment all play a huge role in the disease or the perception of the disease.

The physical thickening of the vaginal wall, the neocologenesis, the increased blood flow, that is all real.

The physics and the heat are real.

And, and apart from learning from a personal level, I wanted to, you know, when I did my dissertation, what could I really delve deeper into to understand and maybe inform the community and clinicians and patients about this, um, condition? So, um, you know, and again, it's not really a new thing.

I think it's new to a lot of people, but the biopsychosocial model has been around for a long time, and yet it's not really in some places spoken about.

You know, some people are still very much in this sort of biomedical, biomechanical way of thinking about things.

So the dis- uh, the course at Cardiff is very much- Focused on bio-so- biopsychosocial.

So everything we did had to take into account the biopsychosocial model, um, which was really, really interesting.

Um, so my, um, dissertation very much focused on what are the causes of, um, pain-related disability in the hypermobile EDS and HSD adolescent and adult population.

So, um, it was a, um, it wasn't, I didn't conduct a research study.

It's your favorite trainer with a belt buckle.

Today's video is taking you through low back screens, addressing the biopsychosocial model of pain, and soft tissue mobilization techniques with the quadratus lumborum.

We are in Franklin, Nashville, outside of the Lifetime, going through with their trainers, showcasing the SUFSTM certification, where you partner with physical therapists, learn appropriate screens, when to refer out, and the best soft tissues and correctives that are gonna be appropriate within our scope as personal trainers.

If you enjoy today's video and podcast, throw it into your story, leave a comment, and remember, big biceps are better than small ones.

So every nine months you gotta come back, and we're gonna do it again.

And by the way, never run, jump, squat, deadlift ever again.

The psychology part of that biopsychosocial model of pain, your mindset is like, "Oh my God, I'm fragile.

I'm gonna die.

And going to rehab directly.

And the book has a biopsychosocial model.

So it means that we're treating the biomechanics as well as the inflammation, as well as the soft tissue problems.

components of the trouble and then the stress factors.

And so the book explains this biopsychosocial model that I helped develop in Europe and That's, uh, that's why I wrote the book.

Yeah, I actually, I was, uh, you mentioned Europe and your book.

I was in London.

So it's made an impact over there in the UK, that's for sure.

So hearing that and knowing like, okay, how do I age well? Like, what is the research telling us? Like, what did your research tell us? What is the overarching themes here of aging well?

I think about it in a biopsychosocial approach.

So hit it from three angles.

Biologically, we know the Mediterranean diet.