Invent Your Way Out of Chronic Pain: A Physicist's Thoughts on Creative Healing

By Peter Lindstrom

From the Author:In the summer of 2015 I couldn't sit without pain, walk without pain, work without pain, or sleep without pain. I spent a great deal of mental energy arranging my physical movements so as to minimize discomfort. I didn't look forward to the future; the very idea of the future was oppressing, and everything looked bleak. Furthermore, I found that pain made continuing my physics career impossible. At the age of 32, I quit my position and devoted myself full-time to solving my medical problems. Today, the pain my back, knees, elbows, and wrists used to cause me is at least 90% gone. And despite having been underweight for the better part of a decade, in the past few years I've put on 30 pounds of muscle.On my path toward healing, I've tried well over 100 different kinds of medical interventions*, everything from exercises to medications to medical devices. I've written this book to share what I've learned on my journey. Unlike most chronic pain books, though, this one doesn't focus on any particular kind of therapy. My experience suggests that any approach which limits itself in this way will itself be limited. Rather, my goal is to give you, the sufferer, the tools you need to effectively and scientifically organize a campaign of trial medical interventions, in order to figure out what works best for you. What are these tools, you may ask? They are the principles and organizational skills you'll need to:1) Find which interventions could make a difference for you.2) Decide, in a scientific and rational way, which interventions you should try and in what order.3) Effectively evaluate what works and what doesn't.Armed with these skills, you'll be in a much better position to take charge of your own healing journey. Though my primary goal is to help you develop your own creative solutions to address your own unique medical problems, I also take some time to share with you specific interventions that have worked for me, in the hope these could help you too. And lastly, I provide you with plans for devices that you can build at home. These can help you deal with problems that refuse to go away. What ties all this together? What is the overarching theme? It's a strategy that's worked for me, and I believe could work for you too: invent your own way out of pain.The fact is that all too often the medical establishment encourages chronic pain sufferers to become passive passengers, blindly following the advice of others. But on this journey of recovery, doctors cannot drive your car. They are a resource, but only you can take charge. Only you have the energy and drive to bring about healing in your body. And unless you take the wheel, your car will wander aimlessly, crash into things, and go nowhere. How does one take the wheel, you may ask? Let me show you how.*Some of the interventions I've tried are: physical therapy, hand therapy, nerve ablation, steroid injections, joint lubricating injections, massage, traction, acupuncture, acupressure, many kinds of prescription drugs, helminthic therapy, ergonomic changes to furniture and equipment, calisthenics, various kinds of straps and braces, padded donuts, heat, ice, eccentric and concentric and isometric strengthening exercises, topical creams, rest, fingerboard training, taping, orthotics, daily alternation of footwear, Graston technique, foam rolling, all manner of stretching, TENs, flotation therapy, multiple cycles of intentional muscle gain followed by intentional weight loss, supplements, multiple kinds of diet modification, medical marijuana, ballistic and static stretching, body blade, balance board, inventing various kinds of medical and accessibility equipment.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1075815347
• ISBN13: 9781075815348
• Release Date: June 2019
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"