Erasing Pain: New Treatments from the World-Famous Rusk Institute's Medical Specialists

As a chronic pain sufferer for the last 15 years, learning about what might be causing my pain, how to reduce the pain, how to minimize its affect on my life and perspective, and how to eliminate the causes of pain have been a top priority. In my search, I have found relatively little help from the medical profession. They are sympathetic, but primarily good at eliminating potential causes of pain through diagnostic testing. The pain goes on. My road has led me through many alternative ways of diagnosing causes of pain and treating it. The lesson for me is that pain has many contributing causes and a wide range of things you can do to help. Having learned that much in 15 years, I was pleased to see these same lessons spelled out in Erasing Pain. Not only that, but the authors have taken 77 categories of diseases and described their causes, typical pain associated with them, and outlined some potential forms of relief. The authors work at the Rusk Institute in New York City where a holistic approach is taken to the patient's pain. This includes looking at emotions, psychology, social needs related to ailments and disabilities, as well as how the patient's life environment may be contributing. One man in pain was jogging with a large dog on a leash. When he stopped taking the dog along at the doctors' suggestion, his pain eventually went away. The book is designed to help patients in pain communicate with their physicians. "We believe that the medical profession treats patient pain very inadequately, sometimes badly." "Most doctors are poorly trained to deal with the phenomenon . . . ."To make the material more accessible, it is in a question-and-answer format. The questions are the ones that patients in pain answer the most often.The book also gives the patient new ways to communicate about pain, including how intense the pain is on a scale of one to ten and its exact analogy in other experiences with pain that are widely occurring (burning, stinging, raw, sensitive, throbbing, or sharp as some examples).Best of all, the book is very open to exploring alternative therapies, and explains why they may work. In my case, one cause of pain was in a place where I felt no pain. People in pain typically only notice the source of pain that is most intense at the moment. I have very flat feet, and needed orthotics. With them, my back stopped putting pressure on my sciatic nerve and most of my leg pain went away after some chiropractic treatments. After eliminating many sources of pain in this sort of indirect way, I finally got to the point where I could feel the pain in my feet. With self massage, I can get a lot of relief from that pain. Exercise, reading, music, and meditation all help (as the book suggests they usually do). My only complaint about this book is that it definitely over does describing what can be treated at the Rusk Institute. Much of the beginning of the book reads like a marketing brochure for the institute. Alth