Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain: Getting Your Life Back

Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain has helped over 90,000 individuals manage their pain and strive to live satisfying, fulfilling lives. In the new second edition, the authors have carefully developed and improved every chapter. Packed with useful advice, tips, strategies, and positive reinforcement, the book empowers readers to become their own informed pain self-managers. Each person with chronic pain is unique and the goal of this book is to help each person manage their lives in the way that works best for them. The new edition includes: \* An updated and scientifically sound discussion of pain in Chapter 1 that gives readers the information they need to best manage their personal pain. \* An updated resources chapter with a useful emphasis on how to find and judge online resources. \* New more in-depth coverage of mental health issues related to pain, including depression, anger, fear, guilt, stress, and memory problems. \* An all-new chapter, Organizing and Pacing Your Life for Pain Self-Management and Safety that includes thorough, well-illustrated information on using assistive technology. \* Completely rewritten exercise chapters with clearer illustrations to help readers build their own exercise program, step-by-step. This chapter also discusses taking advantage of exercise opportunities in the community. \* An updated communication chapter to assist readers as they navigate through the health care system, featuring helpful tips on remote communication as well as in-person visits. \* Another all-new chapter, Managing Pain During Employment and Unemployment, sensitively addresses the issues connected with experiencing pain in the workplace. \* Two completely updated chapters on weight management and nutrition that discuss the relationship between pain and nutrition and reflect current government standards and the most recent research. The Moving Easy Program audio is included with the book on CD or to stream online. Now completely updated, this book is designed to help you manage your pain so that you can get on with living a satisfying, fulfilling life. Chronic pain includes many types of conditions from a variety of causes. Despite these differences, all readers of this book have one very important thing in common -- you are living with pain every day. This book is designed to help you manage your pain so that you can get on with living a satisfying, fulfilling life. To help you discover strategies and skills that will make a difference, this book emphasizes four concepts: 1. Each person with chronic pain is unique. There is no one treatment or approach that is right for everybody. 2. There are a number of things you can do to feel better. These things will not eliminate pain, but they will help you to better manage pain, and help you to become more active and more involved in life. 3. With knowledge and experimentation, you are the best judge of which self-management tools and techniques are best for you. 4. The responsibility for managing your chronic pain day-to-day rests with you, not anybody else. Many people can be of help to you -- your family and friends, your health care team. But, in the end, the responsibility for self-management is yours. Acknowledging that overcoming chronic pain is a daily challenge, this book provides you with the self-management tools to help you meet that challenge. Includes a Moving Easy audio program, a set of easy-to-follow exercises that can be performed at home. "This book is designed to help readers manage their pain so that they can get on with living a satisfying, fulfilling life. Chronic pain includes many types of conditions from a variety of causes. Despite these differences, all readers of this book have one very important thing in common - they are living with pain every day. Acknowledging that overcoming chronic pain is a daily challenge, this book provides readers with proven self-management tools to help them meet that challenge"-- Provided by publisher