Jeff Langmaid (EBC Podcast 519 Reel 02) introduces a concise, practical discussion of a Swiss research study investigating whether fear of bending the back during lifting alters actual lifting mechanics. The speaker highlights that the study compared people who lift frequently at work with those who do not, and reports the clear finding that beliefs about pain/fear can change biomechanics.
This is a hyper practical episode because it relates really directly to what your patients and every human being on planet Earth does every single day, which is bend, lift and move around in the real world. Now this study specifically looked at pain related fear and lifting mechanics in a pretty interesting way. They compared people who lift constantly at work versus those who don't. And and what they found is one of the clearest demonstrations or research based outcomes. They found out that beliefs do change biomechanics. So the research team was in Switzerland and they started this study by asking a really simple but a massively important question. That question is does fear of bending your back during lifting change how you actually move?
