For more than 10 years, Dr. Cynthia Thomson lived with chronic pain that affected every aspect of her daily life. Today, she's an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of the Fraser Valley — and she's leading a national effort to modernize how clinicians across Canada understand and treat it.
Thomson's work centres on a shift in thinking about pain itself. The traditional biomedical model focuses on physical causes — something pinched, something structurally wrong. The biopsychosocial model, which Thomson advocates for, recognizes that biological, psychological, and social factors all shape how pain is experienced. It's a distinction that sounds academic, but for the one in five Canadians living with chronic pain, it has real consequences.
"Unfortunately, many are recommended sub-optimal treatments," Thomson says.
Her own turning point came during the pandemic, when she lost access to physical treatments and turned to the scientific literature instead.
"During the pandemic, I lost access to so-called physical treatments, and that's when I turned to the literature and discovered the neuroscience of pain," she recalls. "As a researcher, I dove into it full on, and just learning about the science of pain improved and, although it took some time, eventually eliminated my own pain."
In her most recent study, participants had lived with chronic pain for an average of 14 years — and their conversations with clinicians had rarely touched on the neurological aspects of pain. They were prescribed medication, physical therapy, or surgery, and few had been told there was anything they could actively do to help themselves.
Thomson is careful not to blame clinicians. Most were trained in the biomedical model, and the biopsychosocial approach has only recently begun making its way into medical school curricula, despite being supported by decades of evidence.
"Getting health-care professionals to change their behaviour is hard, and you have to think of every way to help them adopt it as easily as possible," she says.
Supported by Fraser Health, Thomson is now leading a national advisory panel to develop a practical guide, tools, and training for clinicians. Partners including Pain Canada, Pain BC, and Ontario's Power Over Pain Portal are ready to house the resources once they're complete.
The work is personal as much as it is professional. Thomson recalls one woman from a study who couldn't cut vegetables because of chronic pain. After learning about pain science, she attended a garden harvest with friends and found herself chopping peppers for two hours before realizing she was no longer in pain.
"She started to cry because she realized she wasn't in pain," Thomson says. "I put my heart and soul into my work, and those stories make it worth it."
