In the wake of a back injury in the summer of 2019 and the exceptionally painful and lengthy recovery process that ensued, I found myself astonished by the difficulties faced by chronic pain sufferers looking for the right path forward. The principle takeaway from my experience has been that efforts to deal with chronic pain are often hindered considerably by a patient's reductive instincts. Here are some reductive mistakes I made when dealing with severe chronic back pain:
What I learned:
These takeaways were the result of a lot of reading, an effort that I kept organized using Airtable and have left here mostly just in case I need it again. The pieces linked here are organized into the following categories:
There are certainly other pieces which might be useful, such as research confirming that smoking has a deleterious effect on disc health, that nutrition can effectively reduce inflammation, or explanations of other potential causes of sciatic pain such as psoas or piriformis dysfunction. Similarly, for those with traumatic injuries and serious illness, interventions like surgery and pharmaceuticals may be of more immediate importance. However, for most chronic pain sufferers the most fruitful areas on which to direct focus are thought patterns and exercise, and the resources I've assembled here were primarily selected with that idea in mind. See the right hand sidebar to start browsing.