Hydration is one of the most fundamental areas of nutrition and is important in everyone’s daily habits. For the body to work efficiently, your fluid levels should be at a certain level consistently, and topped up when they get low. It might seem simple to do so, but honestly probably most of us walk around dehydrated most of the time!
Migraines are horrific, I get them myself. Whilst being an isolated event, migraines can be a symptom of chronic pain disorders, sleep disorders, anxiety and even IBD conditions. They are very different from the more common headaches but often get mixed up or put in the same group.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome is an umbrella term describing short and long-term chronic pain, usually after an injury or due to other conditions. It tends to crop up around the time of middle age and is generally more common in females – but it’s still pretty rare. I haven’t met many people who know what it is, let alone how severe it can be!
Joint pain and stiffness are common symptoms across various conditions and situations, including chronic illnesses. Pain and stiffness in the joints are often byproducts of suffering with chronic pain and fatigue, day in and day out. This stiffness is a total nuisance and adds insult to injury when already dealing with so many debilitating symptoms.
Whether you have a form of Arthritis, a complex pain or fatigue disorder, just plain wear and tear, or something else, joint inflammation is terrible. When the joints hurt, life is a misery. When moving hurts, it makes you want to move less, which will likely make the joint stiffness and inflammation worse – a vicious cycle.
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a type of anxiety disorder that causes a consistent state of anxiousness and worry, even when there is no direct or clear cause for it. Around 1 in 25-28 people in UK have GAD, with likely many more showing one or more symptoms, and in the US around 3% of the adult population have GAD also. But before we go into detail about GAD, what is Anxiety?
Seasonal Affective Disorder is also known as Seasonal Depression. In most parts of the world, most people experience their years through different seasons - spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Many chronic illnesses have varied symptoms throughout the seasons, and SAD is actually a symptom of many of these illnesses.
Medical gaslighting is a form of manipulation that makes an individual question their very sanity, and it’s been a problem for a long time. It has been mentioned every time I’ve coached someone, and I’ve actually been present when it happened to my partner in regard to her four illnesses. It’s something that needs greater focus, and whilst it is a minority of the medical community that does this, it still needs to be dealt with.
There is plenty of misinformation out there that could be misleading you if you’re interested in hiring a coach for your illnesses. Among them are many misconceptions, here’s the 10 I most commonly see.
Have a read about each typer in detail and see if you can slot your own pains into the different groups and don’t be surprised if each group is applicable. Knowing your own pain is key to managing and suppressing it because methods differ from type to type. The more you know, the better.