The Pain Detective, Every Ache Tells a Story: Understanding How Stress and Emotional Hurt Become Chronic Physical Pain (The Praeger Series on Contemporary Health and Living) [Hardcover]

Hillel M. Finestone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0313359938 | ISBN-13: 978-0313359934 | Edition: 1

"Pain is everywhere and everyone is talking about it," says Dr. Hillel Finestone, M.D., a researcher and rehabilitation specialist whose work has been featured in publications as diverse as The Lancet, and USA Today. The key to understanding causes and solutions for many apparently mysterious, recurring aches, he explains, lies in understanding the mind-body relationship and the "real meaning" behind symptoms with no immediately obvious cause.

Taking the reader into several diagnostic sessions to illustrate what he sees as a "detective" process to find the source of pain, Finestone explains how psychological and social issues can influence health and healing, for better or worse. Low back and neck pain, fibromyalgia and even work related pains are delved into.In addition to vignettes that illustrate the ideas discussed and show dramatic incidences of how healing the mind can also heal the body, Finestone uses unique and useful diagrams which explain how mind and body are physiologically connected and reactive to each other.

In these pages, readers can follow Dr, Finestone through patient sessions and understand, step by step, how the "pain detective" works to help his patients—and perhaps his readers, too—find lasting relief.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Finestone, a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Bruyere Continuing Care in Canada, helps general readers understand factors that their physicians often ignore: how psychological and social issues can influence health, illness, pain, and recovery. Taking the reader into several diagnostic sessions to illustrate the process of finding the source of pain, Finestone looks at low back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, and work-related pains. B&W diagrams explain how mind and body are physiologically connected and reactive to each other."

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SciTech Book News

"Dr. Finestone's book The Pain Detective is a fascinating voyage into people's lives, their pains, physical and emotional, so closely intertwined, so that attempting to cure the one without tapping the other is inevitably futile."

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Psychology Today

"As many patients do not understand the role of psychological states in their pain, this book will provide them with empowering knowledge. And because the book is structured as cloaked case studies of Finestone's actual patients, many patients will find solace via companionship with the book's patients. . . . Dr. Finestone has written an ex-cellent book recommended to chronic pain patients and physicians alike . . ."

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BC Medical Journal

Review

"As many patients do not understand the role of psychological states in their pain, this book will provide them with empowering knowledge. And because the book is structured as cloaked case studies of Finestone's actual patients, many patients will find solace via companionship with the book's patients. . . . Dr. Finestone has written an ex-cellent book recommended to chronic pain patients and physicians alike . . ." -

BC Medical Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 227 pages
• Publisher: Praeger; 1 edition (September 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0313359938
• ISBN-13: 978-0313359934
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,080,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hillel M. Finestone is a doctor, a specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (Physiatrist) at Bruyere Continuing Care, Medical Director of the Stroke Rehabilitation Program at the Elisabeth Bruyere Hospital and Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa. He has a passion to know what are the causes of his patients' pain problems and what roles social, environmental and psychological factors play in disease expression and recovery from injury. He is "The Pain Detective" of his book "The Pain Detective, Every Ache Tells A Story, Understanding How Stress and Emotional Hurt Become Chronic Physical Pain.".
Finestone takes you right inside his clinic and carefully details how a medical case of difficult to treat musculoskeletal pain can be handled. Issues of disability and the law are woven through the laboratory tests and the sometimes tense questioning that must be undertaken to solve a case.
Finestone offers real solutions via the text, diagrams and a Pain Explanation and Treatment Diagram that he regularly uses with his patients.
Breaking through barriers, in Finestone's case, medical ones, is a recurring theme. Integrating the mind and body in a creative,non-judgemental way is what is needed in medicine but that concept is not always easy to find. Hillel M. Finestone wants to share his personal and scientific thoughts via a narrative approach; through thought provoking and real stories of broken people who find ways to heal their wounds. He hopes you enjoy the journeys described.