Her book, All in My Head, is not only an incredibly validating read for those of us who have lived through the hell of chronic pain, but is mandatory reading for those around us. If anybody doesn't get what you've gone through or what you're going through, hit 'em over the head with the damn book, and watch enlightenment dawn! Here Paula Kamen talks shop about writing a book on chronic daily headache.

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It seems that more and more chronic pain sufferers are launching blogs and doing other work as freelance writers -- whether our writing directly addresses chronic pain or not. So I asked Paula Kamen for her tips on maximizing freelance writing work when disabled. Here's what she said: 1. Ideally, do something other than writing to earn money, so you won't burn out when it comes time to do your real writing. 2. The exception to ...

Loolwa Khazzoom: Why did you turn to exercise for natural pain relief? Brad Lemley: Well I didn't really understand why it worked; it was just kind of an intuition. I started to get my mind around it when I was reading John Sarno's book, Mind Over Back Pain, where he talks about a real disconnect between pain and structural problems in the spine. He came to realize that pain doesn't occur so often as a result of a ...

Regarding the alternative medicine/conventional medicine debate, I think of everything in terms of evolution. If you look at what's wrong with people's health, it's almost always rooted in divergence from the crucible in which we evolved: People are obese, because they don't exercise. "Exercise" is a word we invented for an activity that replicates the physical activity once required for survival, as we evolved in low-tech environments. People are Vitamin D deficient, because ...

There's something about living with chronic pain and chronic fatigue that triggers memories of my adolescence that I'd rather forget, especially that burbling resentment aimed at The Powers That Be. Of course, during my teenage years, those Powers That Be were mostly my parents, who like almost all parents, imposed rules such as curfews and the need to ask permission before going out or taking on any new activities. But these days, it's not my parents, or ...