Ron Kness

Deep Breathing to Help Relieve Chronic Pain Ron Kness

Chronic pain is pain that lasts longer than six months and can't be cured, but can be treated and managed. The pain can range from mild to excruciating and can be either episodic or continuous. According to WebMD, approximately 100 million Americans alone suffer from chronic pain; imagine the numbers worldwide! Chronic pain can affect anyone at any age, for example, if you have a sports injury at a young age, the pain can sometimes follow you throughout life or you are 60 and diagnosed with arthritis ... the stage I'm now at in my life having been diagnosed with osteoarthritis five years ago. Often early injuries, present injuries, or other reasons end up causing chronic pain. Some people have certain genetic codes predispose them towards having chronic pain. There are several conditions that cause chronic pain such as fibromyalgia, arthritis, neuropathy, carpal tunnel syndrome, migraines, and others. You can also have an injury when you are younger and have chronic pain stemming from it but starting later on in life. Chronic pain can be a result of repetition in body movement from a job and sometimes, people simply suffer from chronic pain syndrome whose cause cannot be identified. Regardless, it can have a mind of its own, flaring up for no apparent reason with science still not fully understanding why. So the best treatment is to try and manage it. While many try medications, sometimes their side effects are worse that the pain they are trying to manage. Others go for a more holistic method of treatment like deep breathing. It is cheaper, can be done anytime, doesn't have harmful side effects, and in some cases can be just as effective. In this book we explore how deep breathing can reduce the effects of chronic pain along with the other health benefits of deep breathing.