Why Blogging About Health Is So Important

Have you ever considered blogging about your health? I’ve often said that writing about your health can be good for you. It can be therapeutic. But when you blog, you’re not just helping yourself. You can help other people too.

Blogging About Your Health Can Support People, Educate and Bring Awareness

I’ve got to know a lot of chronic illness bloggers over the last couple of years. Some of their posts are shared here.

Many of us write to support other sufferers, educate and create awareness about our various conditions.

Support

There’s more to living with pain than just the pain itself. So many overwhelming emotions come along for the ride. When they read other people’s stories, sufferers often feel less alone with their problems. It can make a huge difference to a person’s life simply because they know that someone else understands exactly what they’re dealing with.

Education

Often, the names of our conditions mean nothing or very little to non-sufferers but chronic illness bloggers can change that. They can explain that chronic fatigue syndrome isn’t just about feeling tired, that trigeminal neuralgia isn’t just a headache and that living with chronic pain is exhausting and debilitating.

By explaining these things, non-sufferers might understand more. Friends, family and work colleagues might start to get it.

Awareness

Awareness is always important, but especially so if you have a rare condition. It’s amazing how many people you can reach by blogging.

There are awareness days every year for most health conditions but one day a year doesn’t really get the word out. Blogging regularly about your health can do that.

Could Blogging About Health Also Help Doctors to Understand?

I’ve often thought that it would be good if medical professionals read chronic illness blog posts because they might learn more about what their patients’ lives are really like.

Medical professionals learn about health conditions from textbooks. This means they learn the basic facts whereas our blog posts give the real-life version. And very often, there are huge differences between the two versions.

If they learned about all the facts and all the implications of living with health issues they might be able to help patients more.

However, being realistic, I didn’t really think that medical professionals would ever read chronic illness blogs. I was sure that they wouldn’t have the time or the inclination to do that.

However, I was recently proved to be wrong.

The British Pain Society Have Published One of My Posts

A few months ago, I received an email from Dr Rajesh Munglani, a doctor from the British Pain Society. Dr Munglani edits the society’s quarterly newsletter, Pain News. He told me that he had enjoyed reading my blog and asked if he could publish one of my posts in Pain News.

When I read the email, I have to admit that I rolled my eyes because I thought it was spam. But it wasn’t. It was genuine. And it goes without saying that I was happy to agree to my blog post being published. More than happy. Thrilled to bits if I remember correctly.

However, I was quite taken aback that a doctor from the British Pain Society had come across my blog. And I was even more taken aback that he wanted to feature one of my posts in Pain News. This would mean that my post could potentially be read by the British Pain Society’s 1200 members.

If doctors read my post in Pain News, they will learn that there’s more to chronic pain than taking medication four times a day.

My Published Post

The post which Dr Munglani asked to publish was one I wrote in January this year. It was a letter to my chronic pain suggesting that we break up. It was a fairly light-hearted look at life with chronic pain, but it was also very real talking about the frustrations of living with such a ‘miserable, bullying control freak’.

Click here to read the letter I wrote to my pain

What is the British Pain Society?

The British Pain Society was founded in 1967. At that time, it was known as the Pain Group and the membership was open only to doctors. Over the years the Pain Group evolved into the British Pain Society and currently has over 1200 members.

Nowadays, membership isn’t only open to doctors. Other professionals such as nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists can also join. All members are either involved in the diagnosis and treatment of pain or they work in research which will ultimately benefit people who live with pain.

Learn more about the British Pain Society here

Blogging About Health Really Can Help People

Blogging about your health is important. You have a story to tell and people should hear it. Your personal story matters. It might help someone else. And you never know just who might read your posts.

If you’d like to start blogging about your health but you’re not sure where to start, I have a simple guide here:

How to Start a Blog in Simple Steps