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The Pain PodcastAuthor: lepubscientifique
Every episode of The Pain Podcast features interviews with world-leading pain experts, delivering practical solutions for your toughest clinical challenges. Youll get cutting-edge insights, evidence-based strategies, and actionable advice to revolutionise your approach to pain treatment and transform patient outcomes. Language: en Genres: Health & Fitness, Medicine, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Episode 75: When Everything Hurts: Exploring Predictive Processing in Fibromyalgia
Episode 77
Tuesday, 10 March, 2026
What happens when we try to apply predictive processing models to fibromyalgia? In this exploratory conversation, Tim Beames and Bart Van Buckem work through the clinical implications of understanding fibromyalgia through the lens of prediction, uncertainty, and sensitivity to difference. They discuss why unpredictability is so costly in fibromyalgia, why "healthy activity" can backfire, and how systems become sensitized to even tiny changes. The conversation explores concepts like entropy, allostasis, expectation violations, and the challenge of creating difference without creating threat. Bart brings healthy skepticism throughout, questioning the risks of mechanistic language and whether these models truly help in the clinic. Tim responds by translating theory into practical approaches: micro-variability, building baselines of safety, and pacing at a different timescale. This is thinking-out-loud science. Two clinicians trying to bridge theoretical models with clinical complexity in fibromyalgia—a condition where traditional approaches often fall short. Featuring: Tim Beames & Bart Van Buckem Duration: 39 minutes Level: All clinicians working with chronic pain Note: This episode is followed by a refinement piece where Tim reflects on the limitations of this approach.
