Subject: Re: your callback
From: Ernst Meyer <[email-masked]>
To: Nikola Chubrich <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:13:34 -0500

Dear Nikola,

Thank you again for your proposed mathematical analysis of skeletal 
pain. I am ignorant and very eager to learn. At this juncture I'm about
to resume writing my letter to you, which should be in your e-mail box 
later today or tomorrow.

My immediate thought: Pain is the ultimate intuitive experience. In the 
same manner, and to the same degree that mathematical special relativity 
can reveal the mysteries of the intuitions of time and space, it might 
also shed light on the secrets of pain. By the same token, a 
mathematical investigation of pain might shed light on the nature, 
meaning and function of mathematics including special relativity.

EJM

On 01/22/2020 11:29 PM, Nikola Chubrich wrote:
> Dear Dr. Meyer:
> 
> I got a callback from you at 10 and noticed it at 10:30, but thought it 
> might be too late to call back. I have an email in process to you 
> regarding my thinking about back pain as a /physical /phenomenon. I have 
> no expertise in biomechanics or anatomy, but I have found that by having 
> a simple model of how human movement works, and analyzing it with 
> concepts from Newtonian and Hamiltonian mechanics (no equations needed), 
> harmonic oscillators, as well as differential equations and boundary 
> conditions,, that I have altogether alleviated my own back pain. (And I 
> must credit my Pilates teacher, who started an inquiry into this subject 
> in order to figure out how to play the violin without injury.) I wish to 
> conveigh this understanding to my friend, who has already shown me much 
> kindness.
> 
> Why, for instance, are mattresses problematic for those with back pain? 
> Because they are /unpredictable surfaces/, and musculature obliged to 
> prevent an injurious movement must "crank up" the tension in order to 
> add an extra margin of stabilization to compensate for the uncertainty 
> in the surface. Stasis and overmuch tension being unhealthy itself (and 
> here your knowledge would be a great aid: what happens? Failure of lymph 
> movement, impaired circulation....?), the original injury spreads out 
> into a network of pain.
> 
> I had a back spasm myself, once. It was the greatest amount of pain I 
> have ever experienced, and nothing could touch it. I was riding a bike 
> and had to throw myself on the sidewalk, flopped out like a fish; a 
> bystander called an ambulance and sent me to the emergency room.