Welcome to July’s Pain-Blog Carnival, a collection of this month’s great writing related to pain.  If you have a blog or website and would like to have an article considered for a future edition, let me know here.

Ordinary Miracles shares an article from the Onion that puts our problems into perspective.  A great – and sobering – read!
Being Chronically [...]

Alexandra Carmichael, a scientist whose mother has lived with migraine for 30 years, is conducting a study on migraine through the website she co-founded, Cure Together.  She’s gathering self-reported data on symptoms, treatments, and triggers for migraine, to discover which migraine treatments work best for patients with different groups of symptoms.
Participation in the study is [...]

On Fridays, I’m sharing relaxation videos from YouTube.  I hope you try them and enjoy them!
Today’s video is from 2331152 Channel.

I was on vacation in London and Paris recently…  croissants, the Louvre, double-decker buses…  We had a really good time.  We took the “tube” and “metro,” the subways in these 2 cities, everywhere, which was very convenient and the only sane way to get around these 2 cities.

However, I did notice that many subway stations were [...]

This article is from Sarah B., a colleague of mine and social work student.  Sarah is doing a project about health advocacy.
Dear How To Cope With Pain Readers:
An important part of coping with pain is learning to advocate for yourself with doctors, caregivers, friends and family.  We’ve all learned important advocacy skills in the course of [...]

On Fridays, I’m sharing relaxation videos from YouTube.  I hope you try and enjoy them!
Today’s relaxation exercise is from Seller Central.

Like many chronic pain conditions, fibromyalgia can be:

hard to diagnose
mistaken for other disorders
mistaken as a psychological problem
hard to treat

The wonderful American Pain Foundation has come out with a Fibromyalgia Toolkit that has information about:

the disorder
treatment
how to cope
recent advances
current research

This is a great project and will be helpful to patients and families to learn more.  Thanks [...]

Welcome to the last article in our series Why You Should See a Pain Management Psychiatrist.  This week we’ll look at using newer treatments such as mirror therapy and graded motor imagery for pain.

In chronic pain, pain signals, in a sense, get “stuck” in pain-mode, no longer providing helpful information to you.  Chronic pain creates actual changes in your [...]

On Fridays, I’m sharing relaxation videos from YouTube.  I hope you try and enjoy them!
Today’s video is from Take Money 9.

Your pain is decreasing…
Your comfort is increasing…
You can move easier…
You’re becoming more relaxed…
I often use suggestions such as these of more comfort when I teach patients relaxation and guided imagery exercises.  But would these suggestions achieve a better effect during hypnosis instead?

A recent study says yes.
Researchers worked with patients with fibromyalgia and looked at the effect [...]