Book Review: Why Pelvic Pain Hurts

Why Pelvic Pain Hurts: Neuroscience Education for Patients with Pelvic Pain
By Adriaan Louw, et al
Copyright 2014
67 pages

This book is a little primer for people suffering from pelvic pain. It talks about how it affects your life and how doctors don't understand it.

Pelvic pain/abdominal issues range from bladder issues to IBS to bone misalignment, join dysfunctions and digestive disorders. And sometimes you just have pain for no known reason.

The book uses several different metaphors to make its point, such as pain being like a cup running over, or having a lion on your back all day.

It talks about the body's alarm system and how chronic pain means your body can't get the alarms to shut down. It emphasizes that just because you have pain it doesn't necessarily mean that something is wrong.

I think that in part it is an effort to comfort those who suffer from abdominal/pelvic pain issues because you can't see what is in there and the fear that something is drastically wrong tends to be rather high.

In my opinion, this book is too brief. It starts out well and introduces some concepts, such as cortisol production, that someone might need to pay attention to, but it doesn't say where to look for help. The book then goes on to advocate things like eating right (but doesn't say what that means), and exercising such as stretches, but doesn't spell out anything specific. Just saying "do aerobics" is not especially helpful, especially if you're so sick you can't actually *do* aerobics.

So far none of the books I've read on abdominal and pain issues actually go far enough or offer the kind of help I am seeking. Maybe I just haven't found the right book.

This is a good book to give to people who want to understand what I'm dealing with - my husband, for instance, or close friends. It helps them understand how much pain I'm in, if nothing else.