Life Beyond Chronic Pain – A book review

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you! I’ve been missing in action lately and early in the new year I’ll do a few posts explaining why. For now though, I’d like to talk to you about a book I’ve been reading over the last few months; Life Beyond Chronic Pain : The Step By Step Guide to Healing Chronic Illness Naturally.

I have been given this product as part of a product review through the Chronic Illness Bloggers network. Although the product was a gift, all opinions in this review remain my own and I was in no way influenced by the company.

life-beyond-chronic-pain-cover

Life Beyond Chronic Pain is a short e-book (only 46 pages including the covers) available via Amazon written by Jaime Hiedel. Jaime is a 30-something year old woman who lives with several chronic illnesses, including chronic pain and autism. She blogs over at I told you I was sick about “chronic pain, natural remedies, ASD, relationships and life…”

Book Structure – Ease of reading

As well as being a short book, each section is broken up into even shorter sections. This is great for those of us living with chronic illness who may find it difficult to read for long periods of time. Despite this, it still took me over a month to read the book – mainly because my brain fog was quite high the last few months and I was struggling to do anything that involved reading or working on the computer.

I found, at least in the introductory section of the book, that I was struggling to follow what was being said. I think this was more of an issue with my capacity at the time than an issue with the text itself but it did feel quite disjointed. Having said that, once I got to the actual details of how Jaime recommends healing chronic illness naturally I found that it became easier to follow.

Content – Healing Chronic Illness Naturally…

As the title suggests, this book is all about helping people have a life beyond chronic pain. Jaime talks about how it is possible to heal chronic illness naturally by following a certain regime.

Personally, I don’t like information that claims that you can completely recover from a chronic illness by doing XYZ. Thankfully Jaime doesn’t do that explicitly. Although she claims that it is possible to heal yourself naturally, she acknowledges that not every treatment option works for every individual. Instead she recommends an order to look into and experiment with different treatment options.

Jaime suggests that you need to:

  1. Eliminate
  2. Detoxify
  3. Rebuild
  4. Maintain

(in that order)

Based on my own experiences, I have to agree that the steps she outlines are important ones to go through. I believe that if you attempt to follow this type of program after first getting diagnosed you’re more likely to reach a point where you can have a reasonable lifestyle (even with persistent symptoms).

Within each section, she goes into more details with examples of how you can do each of these steps. Eliminating toxic people, drugs  and foods from you life. Detoxifying your body, mind and soul with different techniques. Rebuilding with a healthy diet, balanced lifestyle with meditation and exercise, and finding meaning and purpose in life. And finally, maintaining by being mindful about what you do with your new found energy and health.

Overall, I found this book a good way to reinforce what I have already learnt myself through trial and error. I would highly recommend Life Beyond Chronic Pain to people newly diagnosed, who are looking for where to begin.