When someone is in pain, "how much pressure?" is rarely the most useful question.
A more useful one is: how is the pressure organised?
What Pressure Distribution Means
Pressure describes force over an area of contact. Distribution describes how that force is organised — which areas take more, which take less, and how that organisation changes while the task is performed.
Two people can record a similar pressure total and distribute it completely differently. That difference is often where the interesting information sits.
Why It Matters When Pain Is Present
Pain changes how people move. Weight shifts. Loading patterns adjust — sometimes subtly, sometimes not.
A pressure measurement during a defined task can record aspects of that adjustment:
- how force is spread across the contact surface
- whether the organisation differs from one side to the other
- whether the pattern changes between repetitions
- whether the pattern is different from the person's recorded baseline
It is a description of the physical response. It is not an explanation of the pain.
What Distribution Can Tell Us
When the same task is measured before and after an input changes, the distribution question becomes concrete:
- did the organisation of load change?
- did it change on both sides equally?
- did it repeat consistently across repetitions?
Repeatability matters here. A single pattern is one observation. A pattern that repeats consistently can be compared. A pattern that varies from repetition to repetition is also information.
What Distribution Cannot Tell Us
A pressure distribution does not identify the source of pain.
- it does not show where pain originates
- it does not reveal tissue damage, inflammation or nerve compression
- it does not diagnose any condition
- it does not prove that the person's pain is caused by the pattern it recorded
Pain is the person's experience. Pressure distribution is a recorded physical response. The two can be compared over time — neither substitutes for the other, and neither diagnoses the other.
Where the Pressure Is Measured
Two measurement locations are treated separately:
SENSOR SLING — the I AM 900 Sensor Sling records pressure through the Sling measurement location, where the instrument configuration supports it. This is pressure at the Sling contact — not pressure inside the body.
PRESSURE MAT — where used, the pressure mat records ground and contact loading, including left/right loading and how that distribution changes over time.
They are different instruments recording different surfaces. I AM 900 does not combine them into an invented single score.
Baseline, Then Compare
The distribution measurement only becomes genuinely useful against a baseline:
BASELINE → MEASURE → CHANGE THE INPUT → RETEST → COMPARE.
What did the person report before, and after? What did the pressure distribution do? Read separately, then together.
Neither answer diagnoses anything. Both answers describe the response — and the comparison is what makes the next calibration decision informed.
