Frame Foundation

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a 2016 report revealing that low back and neck pain accounts for the third highest amount of US healthcare spending, at an alarming $87.6 billion per year. It is intuitive for many who are in pain that muscles may play a role in their discomfort. After all, how often do we book massages to try to relieve aching necks and backs? It will come as a surprise for many that doctors are not taught in medical school to consider muscles as a source of body pain. How can it be that we are spending nearly $90 billion annually to treat pain, while ignoring muscles as a pain source? How many people have been resigned to tolerating rather than enjoying life, to giving up sports and movement they love, or even removing themselves from the workforce, all because the pain in their muscles could not be addressed by the medical community? FRAME seeks to address this oversight by promoting medical education that gives muscles and the role they play in pain conditions the attention they deserve. Continuing to treat within the traditional medical mindset of nerve and bone pain is to fail those - including more than 100 million Americans - in chronic pain. We can do better.