Life Without Pain: Free Yourself from Chronic Back Pain, Headache, Arthritis Pain, and More, Without Surgery or Narcotic Drugs

Although its title is an overstatement, this book by the medical director of the Pain Alleviation Center in Roslyn, N.Y., who is also a professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, offers hope and constructive advice for the chronic pain sufferer. Linchitz cautions readers that his program deals solely with pain and does not treat diseases like arthritis or cancer that cause pain. The book, therefore, is not a substitute for medical treatment. Linchitz provides a program to mitigate the chronic pain of migraine, backache and sciatica, as well as the phantom pain from amputated limbs. He advises readers on coping with the psychological stress and depression that often accompany chronic pain, and chronic benign pain sufferers on weaning themselves from drugs. Therapies for pain control described here include exercise, diet, transcendental meditation, biofeedback, self-hypnosis, pain-control imagery and less familiar techniques such as autogenics, where the repetition of six formulas act as mantras, shutting out stressful thoughts that interfere with one's communication to the unconscious level of the brain. 50,000 first printing; author tour. (February)