Two major developments in women's health have recently made news: less invasive alternatives to the pap smear — long considered “an uncomfortable but necessary evil” for cervical cancer screenings — ...

Co-authored by neuroplastician, speaker, and author Jasmine Benson. Imagine you take a sugar pill, believing it to be a powerful painkiller, and your pain actually diminishes. Is it all in your head, ...

An unpleasant and often difficult aspect of life consists of experiencing temporary, extended, or permanent physical pain. As we go through life, no matter how careful we are or what precautions we ...

People often use the phrase “mind over matter” to describe situations where aches and pains in the body are overridden using the mind. A gardener comes in from gardening and is surprised to discover a ...

Almost everyone has pain sometimes. It might start as a twinge in your back, a dull ache in your knee, a tingling on the bottoms of your feet. Maybe you slept funny, or hoisted a full bag of groceries ...

Gout pain can get worse at night for a number of reasons, such as changes in your hormones, changes in your body position, and fewer distractions. Gout is a type of arthritis resulting from uric acid ...

Back pain is common. One in thirteen people have it right now and worldwide a staggering 619 million people will have it this year. Chronic pain, of which back pain is the most common, is the world’s ...

Once used mainly for distraction, VR is now being studied as a way to retrain the brain’s pain pathways—especially for people with chronic and hard-to-treat conditions. Virtual reality isn’t just for ...

Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. From stubbing your toe to dealing with the occasional headache or sore back, to ...

New research suggests pain is not a simple signal of injury but a process that unfolds across nerves, spinal cord, and brain. Scientists are now targeting earlier points in that pathway, before pain ...

A new study found that changing how people walk can ease knee arthritis pain, reduce joint stress and slow cartilage damage ...