Those who know me will know I love a challenge and I feel very lucky to be invited to take part in the Flippin Pain Peloton this year. We will be cycling 35-40 miles per day for 5 days to raise money for Pain Concern and publicity for the brilliant work that Flippin Pain does ( https://www.flippinpain.co.uk/ ) .. All the gear and no idea and a sore bum incoming!!

We're a team of clinicians, academics and people who live with pain ourselves cycling across the Tees Valley and North Yorkshire with the aim of raising awareness of the Flippin' Pain campaign and raising funds for Pain Concern.

“I’m at my wits' end. Everything hurts. Why me? Why can’t these doctors take my pain away? Why, after all these years, does no one even believe there’s anything wrong with me?” 

Millions of people with persistent pain in the UK are stuck with their lives on hold, struggling to find answers to these questions. 28 million people in the UK live with persistent pain. It can have a devastating impact on mental wellbeing: 49% of those with persistent pain experience depression, and 16% feel so bad they sometimes want to die.

Misconceptions and misunderstandings dominate public beliefs about pain. These misconceptions are rooted in the outdated, narrow, biomedical view of pain that it is simply caused by tissue injury and won’t go away until the tissue is fixed. These misconceptions act as barriers to good quality, evidence-based care. Over the past 50+ years scientists have learned a great deal about how pain works that dispel these myths and misconceptions. But that information has not filtered through to the person on the street and these myths continue largely unchecked. 

The Flippin’ Pain public health campaign is tackling this head on. Our mission is to change the way that people think about, talk about and treat persistent pain. Flippin’ Pain delivers scientific information to the public, packaged in a fun and engaging way to communicate key messages such as “hurt does not always mean injury”. It aims to help people move away from the outdated biomedical understanding that pain always equals damage, towards a more contemporary, scientific, biopsychosocial understanding that pain is a marker of perceived need to protect our tissues. 

Our philosophy is twofold. If people understand pain better, they will: 1) manage it better and worry about it less, and 2) have better pain literacy, helping them make more informed evidence-based choices such as developing increased willingness to try active physical and psychological therapies and less inclination towards non-evidence based, biomedical treatments that can sometimes do more harm than good. 

The campaign doesn’t only target people in pain. We also reach out to those who don't have pain currently to introduce a preventative role through education. Additionally, we target the friends, families, carers and employers of people with pain helping them to better understand persistent pain to foster a social environment that enables people with pain to do the things they need to do without prejudice.

In 2021 we headed out on our first Community Outreach Tour across the county of Lincolnshire. In May 2023, we are bringing the campaign to the North East of England: Teesside and North Yorkshire. We will be travelling from town to town offering a smorgasbord of community engagement events and delivering pain science education en masse to blast unhelpful myths about pain out of the water and pave the way for better pain management for all. 

In this endeavour, in collaboration with Pain Revolution in Australia, world leaders in public health initiatives for pain, we are partnering up with Pain Concern (https://painconcern.org.uk/).

Pain Concern is a UK charity focused solely on helping people with pain. It aims to raise awareness about pain and improve the provision of pain management services throughout the country. It strives to support people with pain and those who care for them. Central to the services Pain Concern offer is their Pain Support Helpline (help@painconcern.org.uk telephone 0300 123 0789). The helpline offers confidential, anonymous, and free telephone/email services to individuals in the UK. Calls and emails are answered by trained and skilled Helpline volunteers with the aim to support and empower callers. This includes providing callers with the information and tools they need to manage their pain better.

Flippin’ Pain is in awe of the great work they do, and wants to support them just as they support people with pain and their families. To this end, the cyclists on the Flippin’ Pain Peloton tour are raising money for Pain Concern to help them to continue in their vital work.

Thanks so much for your donation!