One of the most common questions that I receive every day is, “Doc, what are you reading?”
And, “What do you think are the most important books that I can pick up for my own library?”
Today I wanted to shoot a very, very quick recommendation for you on what I believe are the two most critical books that belong in the library of every physician, therapist, trainer, coach, and person who’s ever experienced pain, all right?
The first book I’m going to recommend to you is called, “Therapeutic Neuroscience Education.” Fantastic book, it goes into tremendous amounts of detail in the base level neurology of how pain really works in the brain.
One of the things we always talk about in our courses is that in the mid 1600’s, there was a pain theory developed called Cartesian Model of Pain, and really been dealing with the ramifications of that ever since. So this is a fantastic book to learn a lot of emerging neuroscience in terms what we know about how pain works, and much more importantly what to do about it, particularly for people who are suffering from chronic conditions.
All right. So that’s number one, Therapeutic Science Education. Now, this I will admit is kind of weighty.
There’s a lot of technical language in it, particularly in the first few chapters. If you move past the first few chapters, it goes much more into metaphors and analogies that people use kind of in the current pain world to help people explain what’s going on so that they can manage it better.
So if this seems a little too weighty, they also have some plan based education out there.
My favorite book that they have is called “Why do I Hurt?” So the author’s name is Louw. Very easy to find. I’ll give you some links to check that out. So fantastic book.
I’ve been recommending this one for the last several years.
Now, I want to introduce to “Explain Pain Supercharged”. All right. So when I first got into the neuroscience of pain, two of the most influential authors that I was really exposed to beyond kind of the grandfathers of all this information were Lomer Mosely and David Butler. Brilliant researchers, clinicians, based out of Australia, and their original book called Explain Pain was fantastic.
Used to recommend in our courses, and then this one came out and I kind of replaced it. Now, they released their new one called Explained Pain Supercharged. This book is revolutionary. I can just say it that. It is that good.
They have coalesced so much information into this newest version of the book, that I again I believe it belongs not in just the library, but on the desk of everyone that works with people in pain because the amount of information contained in here will help you completely restructure your thinking about how to communicate about pain, to clients, how to communicate to yourself about clients, and then all the different things that we do to help people improve their lives by getting out of pain.
So Explain Pain Supercharged.
Now, a lot of people have been asking me, “Doc, I checked on this. It’s kind of expensive.”
Yeah, it is. I don’t have any wholesale agreement with them or anything, so it is what it is, and I will tell you it is worth absolutely every penny.
So this are the two that I would recommend you check out.
Remember if you’re not into the whole neuroscience thing, you just want to have a more comfortable, easy-to-read version of kind of the basic neuroscience of pain and how to deal with it, check out Why Do I Hurt? from the authors of Therapeutic Neuroscience Education.
Otherwise, get them both, read them both.
It will seriously change everything that you think with regards to pain and also how you communicate about it.
So if you have any questions about this, let me know.
Also, if you enjoy book recommendations, let me know.
We can meet up for topics that you would like to know about, and I’ll you what I have been reading over the last few months, or years, and what I consider to be the most influential.
So thanks guys. Talk to you soon.
