Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions:Self Management of Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Asthma, Bronchitis, Emphysema and others

5 Responses to Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions:Self Management of Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Asthma, Bronchitis, Emphysema and others

1. Bette E. Angstadt says:

   March 23, 2010 at 2:55 am

   This book is an excel­lent sum­mary of cur­rent find­ings on sev­eral chronic con­di­tions preva­lent in our soci­ety includ­ing heart dis­ease, arthri­tis, dia­betes, asthma, bron­chi­tis, emphy­sema and oth­ers. It offers many sug­ges­tions for both patient and care­taker in deal­ing with prob­lems in daily liv­ing with the above men­tioned dis­eases.
   Rat­ing: 5 / 5
2. Norman Goldman says:

   March 23, 2010 at 3:03 am

   Over the past twenty years the Stan­ford Patient Edu­ca­tion Research Cen­ter has devel­oped, tested, and eval­u­ated self-management pro­grams for peo­ple suf­fer­ing from chronic health prob­lems. The objec­tive of these pro­grams is to help peo­ple gain self-confidence in the abil­ity to con­trol their prob­lems and learn how health prob­lems have an impact on their lives. Sev­eral man­u­als have been put together to go along with these pro­grams. One such man­ual is Liv­ing a Healthy Life with Chronic Con­di­tions that instructs peo­ple with a chronic dis­ease how to cope and live with it. 

   You are prob­a­bly ask­ing how can you have an ill­ness and still live a healthy life? As pointed out in the manual’s intro­duc­tion, it is impor­tant to look at the con­se­quences of most chronic dis­eases. In most cases, no mat­ter what the dis­ease may be such as heart dis­ease, dia­betes, liver dis­ease, emphy­sema, Parkinson’s or any other one, there is often one com­mon ingre­di­ent, they cause most indi­vid­u­als to lose phys­i­cal con­di­tion­ing that results in fatigue. More­over, there may also be emo­tional dis­tress, frus­tra­tion, anger, depres­sion, or a sense of help­less­ness. As the man­ual points out: “Health is sound­ness of body and mind, and a healthy life is one that seeks that sound­ness. ” Con­se­quently, if you want to live with a chronic ill­ness, you have to work hard at over­com­ing the phys­i­cal and emo­tional prob­lems asso­ci­ated with the dis­ease. Liv­ing a Healthy Life with Chronic Dis­ease focuses on how to receive the great­est pos­si­ble phys­i­cal capa­bil­ity and plea­sure from life. One caveat, the man­ual does not present mir­a­cles or cures, rather its empha­sis is on tips and ideas to make your life eas­ier. The advice emanates from physi­cians and other health pro­fes­sion­als, who have learned to pos­i­tively man­age their illness. 

   Divided into twenty-one chap­ters, the man­ual cov­ers such top­ics as becom­ing an active self-manager, find­ing resources, under­stand­ing and man­ag­ing com­mon symp­toms, using your mind to man­age symp­toms, the pos­i­tive effect of exer­cise, com­mu­ni­cat­ing, sex and inti­macy, eat­ing habits, man­ag­ing your med­i­cines, mak­ing treat­ment deci­sions, man­ag­ing such chronic dis­eases as lung, high blood pres­sure, arthri­tis, dia­betes, and plan­ning for the future con­cern­ing fears and real­ity. The last chap­ter pro­vides over two hun­dred help­ful hints. 

   Begin­ning with an over-view of self-management, the authors explore chronic ill­ness in gen­eral and point out the most com­mon prob­lems. The authors also pro­vide advice and guid­ance con­cern­ing self-management skills that are unique to a par­tic­u­lar dis­ease, although as men­tioned, many of these still have much in com­mon. The remain­ing chap­ters pro­vide the details needed to mas­ter many of the self-management skills. 

   Some peo­ple suf­fer­ing from a chronic ill­ness will with­draw and their dis­ease becomes the cen­ter of their exis­tence. How­ever, there are oth­ers who real­ize how harm­ful this can be and some­how man­age to get on with their life. As men­tioned, the dif­fer­ence is between the two approaches and it is not the dis­ease, but rather, how a per­son copes with a chronic dis­ease and how they man­age the disease. 

   The man­ual explores in detail the fol­low­ing: recog­ni­tion that you are your own man­ager and like a man­ager of a busi­ness or house­hold you must decide the fol­low­ing: what you wish to accom­plish; try to seek out alter­na­tive ways to accom­plish your goal; begin with short-term plans by cre­at­ing an action plan or an agree­ment with your­self; carry out the plan; ver­ify the results; make the nec­es­sary changes; and remem­ber to reward your­self. These are the essen­tial steps in becom­ing an active self-manager. 

   More pre­cisely, there are four chap­ters that are strictly devoted to exer­cise, and as the authors assert: “Reg­u­lar exer­cise and phys­i­cal activ­ity are vital to your phys­i­cal and emo­tional health and can bring you fun and fit­ness at the same time. ” These chap­ters include dia­grams, exer­cise prob­lems and pos­si­ble solu­tions, sug­gested fur­ther read­ings, and a mul­ti­tude of other aids. 

   Two chap­ters explore the prob­lems peo­ple with chronic dis­eases have with com­mu­ni­cat­ing either with fam­ily or friends or their health care providers. The authors dis­cuss ways to improve the com­mu­ni­ca­tion process. An entire chap­ter deals with sex and inti­macy, as cou­ples liv­ing with a chronic health prob­lem often face a chal­lenge in keep­ing this impor­tant aspect of their rela­tion­ship alive and well. Another very com­pre­hen­sive chap­ter deals with healthy eat­ing. Top­ics cov­ered are what is healthy eat­ing, plan­ning a healthy meal, read­ing food labels, an exten­sive food guide, and sev­eral tips con­cern­ing cer­tain chronic dis­eases as dia­betes, heart, and lung. Con­sid­er­able ink is devoted to man­ag­ing you med­i­cines and mak­ing treat­ment deci­sions. What can we believe when it comes to new med­ica­tions and how do we decide what might be worth a try. There are four chap­ters that deal uniquely with a spe­cific dis­ease as lung, heart dis­ease and high blood pres­sure, arthri­tis, and diabetes. 

   The last two chap­ters devote them­selves to plan­ning for the future and help­ful hints. 

   With its clear and orga­nized struc­ture, Liv­ing a Healthy Life with Chronic Con­di­tions suc­ceeds where so many books of a sim­i­lar nature fail. It is not only an edu­ca­tional book-it man­ages to be an eye-opener with its wealth of infor­ma­tion and advice. 

   Norm Gold­man, Pub­lisher & Edi­tor Bookpleasures

   Rat­ing: 5 / 5
3. PM says:

   March 23, 2010 at 3:39 am

   My father is 88 years old and tends to hate going to the doc­tor. He felt no dif­fer­ent even after going to the hos­pi­tal for con­ges­tive heart fail­ure and then hav­ing a stroke. I bought him this book and he thanked me pro­fusely say­ing that it will help him to man­age his con­di­tion. Obvi­ously the approach in the book was non-threatening and appealed to him.
   Rat­ing: 5 / 5
4. David Spero says:

   March 23, 2010 at 4:07 am

   This book started the Self-Management approach to chronic ill­ness. I trained in the Self-Management pro­gram and have led groups for years, and have seen peo­ple make won­der­ful changes. This expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge inspired me to write my book, The Art of Get­ting Well. Drs Lorig, Hol­man, Sobel and the other authors lay out all you need to know to develop your pro­grams of exer­cise, relax­ation, emo­tional sup­port, and healthy eat­ing. They also teach how to deal suc­cess­fully with med­ical sys­tems and treat­ments. The book stresses liv­ing the best pos­si­ble life, not just fol­low­ing med­ical orders or watch­ing every­thing you eat. It’s an excel­lent com­ple­ment to my book, which will pro­vide some inspi­ra­tion to attempt the behav­ior changes that “Liv­ing a Healthy Life” explains so well.
   Rat­ing: 4 / 5
5. Bruce Jones says:

   March 23, 2010 at 6:05 am

   This book does an excel­lent job of pre­sent­ing how chronic ill­ness patients are over­whelmed and how they can aggres­sive­ly­con­front the debil­i­tat­ing cycle and suc­cess­fully man­age the lifestyles they must lead. Every­one with a chronic ill­ness is forced to live dif­fer­ently than all oth­ers, no mat­ter their age. The book ana­lyzes and describes the deplet­ing cycle that any­one with a chronic, dibil­i­tat­ing ill­ness encoun­ters, and offers proven solu­tions on how to break the debil­i­tat­ing cycle and progress out­ward inspite of the ill­ness.
   Rat­ing: 5 / 5