Chronic pain is not a life sentence If you are one of the 100 million people who suffer from chronic pain, you may be feeling hopeless and helpless, relying on endless medications that don't work, feeling worse and worse. But there is hope -- and help. The innovative program at the acclaimed Las Vegas Recovery Center, at which Dr. Mel Pohl is Medical Director, has helped thousands of sufferers to reduce chronic pain without the use of painkillers. The Pain Antidote shares this program's concrete tools and strategies, offering: Cutting-edge research on how pain affects your brain How your emotions affect your experience of pain A comprehensive program, including a four-week Jump Start plan Pain-reducing gentle exercises and health-supporting foods And much more.
A holistic approach to confronting chronic pain Pain is one of the most important and urgent issues facing the world today. Millions are afflicted with pain, and it is the most frequent reason Americans seek medical attention annually. More than 50 million people in the United States suffer from chronic pain. In fact, pain is a worldwide pandemic with no end in sight. In a conversational and easy-to-read format, A Day Without Pain reviews the physical and psychological problems associated with pain, as well as ways to assess it. It also examines methods to treat pain in a comprehensive holistic manner so that health and function can be restored without the use of prescription painkillers.
An indispensable guide to reducing the suffering―of patients and caregivers alike―and to improving healthcare delivery for all In our efforts to treat patients, cure illness, and manage institutions, healthcare professionals too often overlook the fundamental purpose everyone in the industry shares: to alleviate suffering. Press Ganey’s Chief Nursing Officer, Christina Dempsey, has worked everywhere in healthcare, from the ward floor to the hospital boardroom. She has also experienced the system as a patient and as a family member of a critically ill patient. In The Antidote to Suffering, this 30-year healthcare veteran and patient-experience thought leader argues that the key to improving healthcare is to reduce the suffering—physical, psychological, and emotional—of patients and caregivers alike through Compassionate Connected CareTM. Drawing on her 360-degree perspective, Dempsey offers a comprehensive, detailed, evidence-based plan that addresses the clinical, operational, cultural, and behavioral dimensions of care that every patient and caregiver experiences, in every setting. When suffering decreases, Dempsey argues, outcomes improve for patients and those who care for them. A virtuous cycle takes hold, leading to increases in morale, loyalty, and productivity and results in a culture that drives quality, safety, and value. It paves the path for creating a new national healthcare culture—one that values compassion, fosters efficiency, and drives innovation The Antidote to Suffering is the first book to explore the pervasiveness of suffering in our healthcare system, and to provide the strategies and tools to: * Identify and measure suffering throughout your organization * Create a system in which every clinical response is informed by compassion * Operationalize staff behavior to promote meaning and purpose * Increase productivity by building a culture of collaboration Reducing human suffering isn’t just a moral imperative for healthcare providers. It’s a practical way to improve organizations and fix our broken system—without sacrificing the respect, dignity, and compassion we all deserve.
Self-help books don't seem to work. Few of the many advantages of modern life seem capable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth—even if you can get it—doesn't necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can't even agree on what "happiness" means. So are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way? Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modern-day gurus, they argue that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it's our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. And that there is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty—the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. Thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting, The Antidote is the intelligent person's guide to understanding the much-misunderstood idea of happiness.
Table of Contents Introduction Ginger Making Your Own Ginger Grater Ginger Decoction Ginger Tea Changing your lifestyle How Far Have You Walked Today? More Natural Remedies Turmeric Conclusion Author Bio Publisher Introduction Use honey as a sweetening agent, instead of sugar. This is the healthiest natural substitute, especially when you are drinking ginger juice. Three nights ago my eight hours of sleep was interrupted suddenly when I woke up, with an acute burning sensation and pain in my stomach and chest region. For a terrible moment, it was“ golly, heart attack,” until I calmed down and began to think straight. I was down with an acute case of acidity/dyspepsia, whatever have you. In fact, with dire images of gulping down antacids by the fistful, for the first time in my life when I had always preached against the usage of chemical-based drugs, well, what did I do now, especially at 2 o’clock in the morning? No, we do not have antacids or painkillers in our medicine cabinet. We practice natural curing, especially when there are so many natural herbs and spices, available right in your kitchen closet to get rid of all the aches and pains naturally. So I got up, took out my skillet, filled it up with water, put a teaspoonful of aniseeds, and another of cumin seeds and then crushed 2 cardamoms. While they were being boiled, I chopped up a piece of raw ginger, and added it to the make sure, because I wanted to get rid of that pain. And ginger is the best natural painkiller ever known to man. In ancient medicine, ginger was an integral part of everybody’s cuisine, not only as a spice, taste, and hence her, but also because of its curative and antiseptic value. While the water boiled, I went to the fridge, took out a glass of cold milk, added a healing teaspoonful of honey to it – and half a teaspoonful of homemade pure clarified butter to line the insides of the intestines, just in case I was coming down with a peptic ulcer – and gulped it down. By that time, the water was boiling, but I had already taken some sort of preventive measures to stop the acid in the stomach from doing more harm to the intestinal lining. The moment the water cooled down, I was taking long grateful gulps. With this water, in my other earthenware container, next to my pillow, to be taken when I felt thirsty during the rest of the night, by 3:20, I was back on that pillow, sleeping like a baby. And no, I did not sleep on my back, which Freud supposedly says is the healthy way of sleeping, because it shows a healthy physical and mental outlook. Fiddlesticks say I. I was curled up like a little baby monkey, with my knees under my chin in a cocoon and my spinal cord curved into a C. That actually is the normal natural way of human beings to sleep, even though doctors and psychologists are trying to dissuade them from sleeping in this manner. If they do not try out any dissuasive stands and stunts, how are they going to sell their antacids? Next morning, what dyspepsia? What stomach pain? What acidity? No wonder one is so grateful to the knowledge passed down from the old ones who have gone before us, who have used these herbs and spices, so, for all of you out there, reading this book, it is going to tell you about the healing qualities of herbs and spices, especially my favorite ginger, without which I cannot do.
The American Society of Addiction Medicine Handbook on Pain and Addiction provides clinical considerations and guidelines for the clinician treating patients with pain and addiction. This book is structured in five sections that cover the core concepts of addressing pain and addiction; diagnosis and treatment; treating pain in patients with, or at risk for, co-occuring addiction; treating substance use disorders (SUD) and addiction in patients with co-occuring pain; and adapting treatment to the needs of specific populations. Each chapter ends with suggestions for further reading on the topics discussed.
Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.
