By Readers of The Sun Magazine — 2003
I live in a culture that’s only too eager to court my vanity.
Read on www.thesunmagazine.org
CLEAR ALL
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
If you have a chronic illness, you may know what it feels like to be a “full-time patient.
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“Body positivity is all about having a good relationship with your body.” Well that’s what everyone keeps telling me. The only problem is, if I told anyone about the way my body treats me, they would tell me it’s a relationship I need to get the hell out of.
After 15 years of chronic illness and even after writing a book titled How to Be Sick, I still can feel sick of being sick. (When I use the word “sick,” I’m including chronic pain.) If you’re as intimately familiar as I am with sick of being sick, you know how unpleasant it feels.
To celebrate the release of my new book, How To Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide, I’ve made a list of 20 tips to help with the health challenges all us face at one time or another in life.
Most genetic studies completely ignore the science of epigenetics, which is how the environment actually turns certain genes on or off.
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Last week was the one-year anniversary of the beginning of my husband’s health crisis. As I gaze at the permanent handicap placard and at him sleeping, once again, on the couch, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned this past year.
For millions of people, chronic illnesses and depression are facts of life. A chronic illness is a condition that lasts for a very long time and usually cannot be cured completely, although some illnesses can be controlled or managed through lifestyle (diet and exercise) and certain medications.
It pays to organize your approach to heart disease or any chronic medical problem.
If someone were to ask you what the hardest part of living with chronic illness is, they might expect you to respond with one of the physical symptoms you experience, or perhaps how this symptom affects your ability to do certain activities.