It Doesn't Have To Hurt by Sanjay Gupta, MD

Last summer, shortly after my husband and I returned from Sicily, my back and my right foot started to hurt. I was furious. How dare my body begin to fail after I had treated it to a wonderful summer visiting Croatia, Mexico, and Italy? The nerve of my ungrateful body. I decided to go to the doctor, and have an ultrasound, and it turned out that basically there was nothing wrong with me. My body was just tired after flying more then 60 hours around the world in trips so close together. Around the same time, this book "It Doesn't Have to Hurt" by Sanjay Gupta popped into my Libby library app. I was intrigued, because I still had body aches and pains on my mind. As a best selling author and neurosurgeon, Gupta has seen a lot of pain. He maintains that too often modern medicine tries to cure pain through medication or surgery. He maintains that a better way to treat chronic pain is through sleep, diet, nutrition, massage, and yes, even more exercise, such as yoga or walking. He goes on to talk about foam rollers, acupuncture, trigger point injections, meditation, and CBD. I found this book very inspiring and, in fact, some of his suggestions worked for me. Instead of sitting on a heating pad, I started doing more hot yoga classes and taking longer walks. The increased activity made my body hurt less. And I also started taking magnesium glycinate capsules, which helped me sleep more deeply, and improved my leg cramps. This is an excellent book for someone battling chronic pain, or temporary pain. Dr. Gupta knows his stuff. To buy this book on Amazon click here.