This will be a good book to check out from the library but I would not spend money on it. I learned a bit but not anything life changing.

I am someone who dealt with severe, daily chronic pain for close to 20 years and my husband has for all of his life (he developed septic polyarthritis at age 2 and it has severely impacted his body), so it's a topic near and dear to me. I was able to eliminate my daily migraines, neck and shoulder pain (which doctors and physical therapists had told me were incurable since they were from an injury) and other chronic health issues through a number of lifestyle changes and other natural remedies and have been pain free for years now.

I used very different things than this book recommends, but it doesn't mean that his advice won't work. I don't know. He dismisses a lot of things that help others though, like chiropractic care (it didn't help me but I know others who swear by it). I do wholeheartedly agree with him about the necessity of fixing your sleep and stress, though. I don't believe it's possible at all to heal if you have poor sleep and too much stress. As a mom of five who's had a child with cancer and multiple surgeries, lost my parents and a heartbreaking number of loved ones, lived most of my life at the poverty level, am a survivor of extensive sexual abuse and dealt with a bucketload of crises over the years, I know that's not something to say flippantly but it's absolutely true. Stress disables us. We have to find ways to find peace even in very hard times or our bodies will break further and further. I wish he'd gone into this more, as that's one of the most crucial pieces.

Dr. Goldenberg mostly discusses pharmaceutical options (which I have never taken), painkillers (ditto -- OTC ones didn't work and I didn't want the strong stuff), along with exercise and mind-body treatments (mostly in just vague "do it" kind of ways). These may good suggestions but not much of it will help my husband or my many friends with fibro and other chronic pain conditions. I read this with them in mind and didn't really come away with anything that I think I can suggest for them. That's not to say it won't give answers for others though, and it certainly packs a lot of information.

I read a digital ARC of this book for review.

I have suffered with chronic pain for about 6 years now and I had high expectations that this book would give me some helpful insights. I feel like there's lots of information in this book, but the chapters are very short and not as in depth as I think they could've been.

As a long term chronic pain patient with painful physical disabilities I was interested to read this book and hoped to gain knowledge from it and the author. While the author is a doctor and a chronic pain patient himself there was much here I do not agree with. i find his suggestion to use Opoids shocking and dangerous with the level of addiction to pain killers in our country. This I feel was irresponsible as a doctor. He dismisses chiropractors which have the distinction of being the only doctors that truly can relieve chronic pain. I found his attitude about long term chronic pain disturbing. What I have learned is that male medical doctors are seldom trained in chronic pain and dismiss women's symptoms as seen in this book when he dismisses his women patients and does not listen to their needs about their particular illness. This is not a book I can recommend.

I was expecting so much more from this book.
To preface, I live with Chronic Pain (Fibro, Lyme & ME/CFS, have all been diagnosed) because of my illnesses, the pain, fatigue, and multiple other health issues I’ve been dealing with for the past 12 years, I am deemed permanently disabled by my chronic pain specialist. My level of activity is low, I struggle to keep myself out of a wheelchair. I make a conscious effort to be as active as I can, it’s incredibly difficult when you start your day exhausted and in pain. Even with the level of physical activity, my pain is still a huge factor in why I'm limited.

Dr. Goldenburg is a pain specialist and has been so for 40+ years. Both he and his wife have issues with chronic pain. In the book, he gives us a bit of a biography about himself and his wife and their personal journey with pain. We then learn of more anecdotes from Dr. Goldenburg in relation to the numerous patients he has seen with Chronic Pain. We cover many topics, from back & pelvic pain to migraines and IBS. We discuss the diagnosis process and treatment options. We also delve into which drugs work best for what pain, the mind-body connection associated with chronic pain, the exercises recommended to help mitigate the pain, behavioral therapy techniques and therapists for pain, and some alternative therapies beneficial to those with chronic pain.
It’s a lot to cover and the author does so in short chapters that really don’t have enough info.
I’m confused as to who this book is intended to target. The information and solutions presented are so basic that anyone in the medical field, Chronic Pain patients, and anyone with an internet connection either already knows it or could easily look it up on a reputable website.

I had other issues with the book as well-
— it seems Dr. Goldenburg is all for taking his Chronic Pain patients off of opioids, something that has been triggered by the opioid crisis and a practice in which many chronic pain patients oppose. I find this incredibly worrying and something I am personally strongly against.

— one of his patients came to him looking for answers about her pain. She had stated that she was diagnosed with Lyme disease after unknowingly having it for years, Dr. Goldenburg diagnosed her with fibromyalgia. The patient didn’t like the diagnosis (supposedly) struggling with the brain-body connection associated with fibro and claimed the Lyme doctor she was seeing was a waste of her time and money, equating the Lyme doctor treating her to a conniving scam artist with a PhD. As someone with Lyme, this bothered me a great deal. The woman and I in this story shared a lot of similarities. I’m disappointed that doctors are continually dismissing the validity of Lyme patients when the exact thing was done to Fibro patients and doctors!

— exercise will help Chronic Pain.. I might be a bit biased and bitter about this treatment option.
This seems to be Dr.Goldenburg’s tried and true method for his patients. Get them off the opioids and onto an exercise program! Oh, and some Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. While yes, this does work for some people (I’d argue more so for those who are not disabled from their illness) it’s not going to work for everyone. When I was a teen I went to a clinic that tried this treatment on me. The doctors on the team were incredibly uncooperative, didn’t listen to any of my concerns and input, and basically bullied me into doing the program. I tried my hardest with it over the summer and experienced more pain, I attended 5 days of school before I crashed with exhaustion. The specialist I was seeing at the time (not related to my pain team) was so worried about my health he put me on bed rest. I was 3 years into being sick and had to withdraw from school. The moral of the story exercise can make you so much worse, especially when the doctors don't have the full picture of your health and ignore your concerns. To say the least my health went even more downhill from there. So while exercise may work for some, for the majority, it’s not going to.

— Mind-body therapy, I’ve tried a lot of them and really struggle. I find this one is the hardest therapy to implement because it's difficult to conceptualize and there just aren’t many people with chronic pain that have reliable access to it through a professional. For me, it’s the most mysterious treatment and I have trouble trusting or believing in it, it just feels like a form of religion and I get mad bad vibes from it.

Surprisingly there are a few things I agree on the doctor with.
Pain, especially chronic pain needs to be implemented as a wider and more intensely talked about and taught about topic in medical school. I know the training they receive for chronic pain is less than the bare minimum, it needs to be drastically changed and revamped. So many people suffer from chronic pain and get ridiculed by the medical field and left to the wayside. Something needs to change and soon.

More research about chronic pain, and auto-immune diseases, especially models involving female patients need to happen. It's a fact that women's bodies work differently than men's, and women experience far more chronic pain and auto-immune illnesses. But most of the research into these illness and the drugs they use to treat them are all based on data gathered from the male body and not female for which these illnesses predominantly affect. It's a huge bias right from the start, from before the moment you go to the doctor.

I also do agree that we need more multi-doctor medical teams focused on treating and helping chronic pain patients. I also believe it needs to be a more collaborative approach between the patient and the doctor. Those of us with chronic pain have likely already encountered our fair share of doctors that have mistreated us and traumatized us on some level, so automatically we have a level of distrust. Chronic pain doctors need to take special care in listening to their patients and asking them what they think may help them best, what they would like to try- chances are they have researched their options and have a better idea of what their body might respond best with.

And finally, I do believe that with current research being conducted we will hopefully find and make a new non-addictive drug to help multiple different chronic pain patients, so those of us who need daily pain relief will no longer be villainized by the stigma attached to opioids.

All in all, the book was ok. None of the ideas present were new, everything in this book would’ve been easily searchable on the internet, or something I would’ve been able to find out by talking to other people with chronic pain and keeping up with current events in the medical community concerning chronic pain.

I personally would be even more displeased by the contents of this book if I had spent my money on it. (The eBook in Canada is $38.99 at 224 pages!!!)

2.5 stars. This wasn’t at all helpful, nor would I recommend it to anyone else with chronic pain.

** ARC provided by Rowman & Littlefield via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

While I appreciated reading a book from an MD who not only acknowledges but does a deep dive into the realities of chronic pain conditions including fibromyalgia, and while Goldenberg provided a lot of information on different treatment ideas, I have a few issues with this book. First, I'm not sure who the audience is supposed to be: at times, Goldenberg veers into super scientific and/or technical language that means more to medical professionals than to patients. Also, he frequently mentions a mind-body based approach but never really gets into the specifics of neither what that encompasses nor how to go about finding those resources; the same is true for his repeated call to find an integrated team of medical professionals (no real advice on how to do that). Finally, I was really disappointed with the dismissive attitude towards chiropractors - they are trained in 4-year postgraduate, evidence-based programs, and chiropractic treatments have proven efficacy especially for back pain. The fact that Goldenberg brushed it off with a statement that he tried it and felt better, but that "maybe it was the placebo effect?" shows a real lack of impartial judgement, and it made me question his take on everything from that point on.