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The Unofficial Twitter Application forChronic Pain
by Lisa Copen
If you have a chronic illness or live with daily chronic pain youare physician may have requested for you to keep a diary of your pain levels so that he can monitor what activities or influences in your life can increase your level of pain. He mayhave recommended that you also record your sleep patterns andeven your dietIf you have attempted to take this on and do it thoroughly, youknow that it can be an overwhelming feeling to keep track of all of your activities andstill maintain a sense of normal life. He can be extremely helpful, however, to you andyour medical team, to have a written record of your activities, diet, etc. to help discover what is it is causing you the greatest pain. Was that extreme flare caused by a minor foodallergy, the weather conditions, or that you were up all night with friends?It is ironic while those of us who live with chronic pain they find it challenging to writedown what we are doing all of the time, what we are eating, and how we are medicatingourselves, millions of people are on the social network Twitter are recording what theyate for breakfast, the fact that they have a cold, or when they're up working at 2:30 a.m.and on the computer. . . and they consider it fun! Now is the time for those of us who have a chronic illness to let Twitter worked for us!This social networking tool has been used to help people with dieting, exercise, and evenencouragement to stop smoking. But it may best benefit those of us with illness, whoneed to record enough of our life to figure out what is causing an increase in pain.
Here are 5 steps to put this into place:
[1] Create an account at Twitter just for your log of chronic pain. If you are already aTwitterer, set up a new one that will remain private. Under the "settings" options, you canchoose to have to approve anyone who wants to follow you. Since this is your pain log,you likely will not wish to any followers. Note that if you already have a twitter accountthis can seem odd, to not want to increase the number of followers.[2] You can now write your posts at any time. You are restricted to 140 characters, butthis keeps it to be a less cumbersome task. You can always submit more than one post todescribe a particular situation. Set up your account so that you are able to send textmessages from your cell phone so you can make posts from anywhere, not just at thecomputer.[3] If you don't know where to start, begin by posting about any major events or  behaviors that are not part of your typical day, and how your body responded to them. For example, if you awake feeling horrible, ask yourself has the weather change
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