In this Living to 100 Club podcast, our guest discusses strategies for changing how someone experiences chronic pain. Our guest is Dr. Afton Hassett. She is the author of a just-released book, Chronic Pain Reset: 30 days of Activities, Practices, and Skills to Help You Thrive. The book helps readers evaluate your pain and its triggers. It offers straightforward and often fun strategies to improve this condition. How can a seemingly disconnected set of activities, like sleep patterns or exercise, actually work to reduce pain. What are some of these activities? And we answer an important question: why the cause of an acute pain experienced five years ago is not the cause of today’s experience. Our listeners will benefit greatly from this conversation about developing your own personalized pain-management tool kit. Be sure to tune in.
Mini Bio
Dr. Afton L. Hassett, PsyD is an Associate Professor and Director of Pain and Opioid Research in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. She is a principal investigator at the Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center. Afton has received over $14M of research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is viewed as a leader in the field of chronic pain and resilience. Recently, she gave the Keynote address at the 2023 Pain Consortium Symposium on Advances in Pain Research for the NIH.
Studying established treatments for this condition and developing new approaches is her passion. But her frustration is that exciting research discoveries rarely make it to the people who could benefit the most. Thus, Afton’s mission was to write her book to bring evidence-based strategies from research and academic medical settings directly to people who live with chronic pain. Her hope is that they will gain new tools to lead more rewarding lives with less pain.
Dr. Hassett’s Book: Chronic Pain Reset: 30 Days of Activities, Practices, and Skills to Help You Thrive