The Way Out

Informationen zum Autor Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv Klappentext A groundbreaking mind-body protocol to heal chronic pain, backed by new research. Chronic pain is an epidemic. Fifty million Americans struggle with back pain, headaches, or some other pain that resists all treatment. Desperate pain sufferers are told again and again that there is no cure for chronic pain. Alan Gordon, a psychotherapist and the founder of the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles, was in grad school when he started experiencing chronic pain and it completely derailed his life. He saw multiple doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the medical treatments helped. Frustrated with conventional pain management, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a mind-body protocol that eliminated his own chronic pain and has transformed the lives of thousands of his patients. PRT is rooted in neuroscience, which has shown that while chronic pain feels like it's coming from the body, in most cases it's generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. PRT is a system of psychological techniques that rewires the brain to break out of the cycle of chronic pain. The University of Colorado-Boulder recently conducted a large randomized controlled study on PRT, and the results are remarkable. By the end of the study, the majority of patients were pain-free or nearly pain-free. What's more, these dramatic changes held up over time. The Way Out brings PRT to readers. It combines accessible science with a concrete, step-by-step plan to teach sufferers how to heal their own chronic pain. Leseprobe In my mid- twenties, life was good. I was in graduate school for psychotherapy at USC. I was an outgoing, active guy. I hung out with my friends. I went to Dodgers games. I was in a kick­ball league (my team even made it to Nationals!). But during my second year of grad school, everything changed. I devel­oped severe lower back pain, and it completely derailed my life. Even something as simple as sitting through a movie became a two- hour- long nightmare. Dodgers games were out of the question. I couldn't watch sports, let alone play them. The stiff classroom seats at USC caused me so much pain, I had to buy a soft, lean- back chair from Office Depot and roll it from class to class. In case you're wondering, lugging a giant chair every­where you go is not great for your social life. I saw three of the leading back specialists in Los Angeles. One of them told me that my pain was caused by a disc her­niation. One of them told me that my symptoms were due to disc degeneration. One of them told me that my back hurt be­cause I was just too tall. I couldn't make myself shorter, but I tried every other treat­ment imaginable: physical therapy, biofeedback, acupuncture, acupressure. Nothing helped. I got so many MRI scans of my back, my friends joked that my spine was turning into a magnet. After about six months, I got an epidural injection. It didn't cure me, but it cut my pain in half. Life was once again bearable . . . for about eight days. Until one morning, out of nowhere, I felt like a grenade went off in my head. It was the most excruciating headache I'd ever had. And it stayed. Chronic daily headache, the internet told me, had no known cause and no known cure. Terrific. After seeing even more doctors, I found a headache special­ist who diagnosed me with high cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure. He prescribed some medication, which didn't help. Here's the thing about high- CSF- pressure headaches: the pain is worse when you lie down. So I couldn't sit up because it hurt my back, and I couldn't lie down because it hurt my head. My father, practical man that he is, suggested that I try to find a way to live at a forty- five- degree angle. Thanks, Dad. Over the next several years, I developed the following addi­tional...

Auteur
Alan Gordon, LCSW, is the founder and executive director of the Pain Psychology Center, where he oversees a team of twenty-five therapists. Gordon developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a cutting-edge protocol for treating chronic pain, and just completed a groundbreaking neuroimaging study on the efficacy of PRT in conjunction with the University of Colorado-Boulder. He was featured on CBS's The Doctors, where he conducted the first fMRI case study of a patient eliminating chronic pain. He is an adjunct assistant professor at USC and has presented on the topic of pain treatment at conferences and trainings throughout the country.

Alon Ziv has a degree in neuroscience and was awarded the Certificate of Distinction in Teaching in Biology from UCLA. He is the author of Breeding Between the Lines: Why Interracial People Are Healthier and More Attractive and has appeared on the BBC London Evening News, NPR, BBC Radio, and local radio across the United States. Ziv co-founded PrepU, an adaptive learning system for the sciences that has been used by college students more than one billion times.

Texte du rabat

A groundbreaking mind-body protocol to heal chronic pain, backed by new research.

Chronic pain is an epidemic. Fifty million Americans struggle with back pain, headaches, or some other pain that resists all treatment. Desperate pain sufferers are told again and again that there is no cure for chronic pain.

Alan Gordon, a psychotherapist and the founder of the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles, was in grad school when he started experiencing chronic pain and it completely derailed his life. He saw multiple doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the medical treatments helped. Frustrated with conventional pain management, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a mind-body protocol that eliminated his own chronic pain and has transformed the lives of thousands of his patients.

PRT is rooted in neuroscience, which has shown that while chronic pain feels like it's coming from the body, in most cases it's generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. PRT is a system of psychological techniques that rewires the brain to break out of the cycle of chronic pain.

The University of Colorado-Boulder recently conducted a large randomized controlled study on PRT, and the results are remarkable. By the end of the study, the majority of patients were pain-free or nearly pain-free. What's more, these dramatic changes held up over time.

The Way Out brings PRT to readers. It combines accessible science with a concrete, step-by-step plan to teach sufferers how to heal their own chronic pain.

Résumé
"The Way Out is a groundbreaking approach to the treatment of chronic pain that gives hope to those who were thought to be incurable. All chronic pain patients owe it to themselves to read this book." –Andrew Weil, MD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Spontaneous Healing
A groundbreaking mind-body protocol to heal chronic pain, backed by new research. Chronic pain is an epidemic. Fifty million Americans struggle with back pain, headaches, or some other pain that resists all treatment. Desperate pain sufferers are told again and again that there is no cure for chronic pain. Alan Gordon, a psychotherapist and the founder of the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles, was in grad school when he started experiencing chronic pain and it completely derailed his life. He saw multiple doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the medical treatments helped. Frustrated with conventional pain management, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), a mind-body protocol that eliminated his own chronic pain and has transformed the lives of thousands of his patients. PRT is rooted in neuroscience, which has shown that while chronic pain feels like it's coming from the body, in most cases it's generated by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. PRT is a system of psychological techniques that rewires the brain to break out of the cycle of chronic pain. The Uni…