Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

First: With the exception of extreme health issues (e.g. Cancer), you likely have a good chance of resolving your health issues. Don’t be discouraged by your chronic pains and think you have to now live with the pain or health issues for the rest of your life. Tackle your health issues like any other engineering problem: understand the problem, make a plan, execute, monitor progress, and iterate over this process (e.g. revise your plans). If you do not take action, nothing will change.

Second: Stress is a killer. I’ve had to visit the emergency room twice because I thought I either had a heart attack or I was dying from high blood pressure. I was way too into my work (due to both passion and commitment), that delays with my projects gave me high mental pressure. Upon re-evaluating my life, I asked myself: which is more important, my work or my health? Once I started prioritizing my health and started pushing back on unreasonable timelines, my stress is gone and none of the chest pain, headache, and high blood pressure issues have come up again.

Last but not least: Your body is a very complex machine and you need to learn how to use it correctly. I had a very sedentary lifestyle and had many chronic pains, e.g. heels, ankles, knees, hip, elbow, wrist, etc. My body was so weak that I even injured my neck and back once just by sleeping in a not-so-great position. I found an awesome PT who specialized in holistic physical therapy and he helped address issues from my feet all the way to my neck. I am now able to resume all the activities from my younger days such as DDR & tennis. There’s too much to explain here but I have two key takeaways: one is my body was extremely tight & inflexible and PNF treatment from my PT was needed for recovery, and another is I just didn’t know my body and muscles well. I did not know how various muscles work, how to use my body & muscles effectively, and what exercises to do and their correct form. Learning and doing the exercises properly and frequently changed my life. Btw: I highly do NOT recommend all the YouTube fitness videos - you simply just cannot tell if what they’re saying is correct and whether their suggestion is even the correct remedy for your problem.

That is all. I wish everyone good luck in addressing their chronic pain!

I think there are a few reasons you see this in health/medical community.

1) just helping people understand a different view of the problem is often enough for one blog post. Stuffing new way to look at solution and new solution together can sometimes be a bit much.

2) we have to be cautious from a regulatory perspective about what we say, and sometimes in being too cautious don't give the people who REALLY want to understaned the processes enough to go on. For our company, I used to say things like "we can increase the synchronous firing of neurons which results in reduced 15^% drop in early night cortisol, and 14.5% increase in hrv....".

But prior to regulatory approvals, we can't point directly to neurological or physiological processes, which means we kinda end up talking around the solution a bit.

3) in marketing, they want to connect and build an audience, so they are dripping more information over time. One post gets feedback and interest from one group, then you do another, and another. It's about building the community and connecting with people, not just a "here's a problem, do the thing, thanks". If you are trying to build a business, you probably need to get in front of people 7-8 times, particularly if you're taking a new approach to a problem, to build trust and brand recognition.

It's not the best, but it is the way the world works.

This is a book that helped me getting started: https://www.amazon.com/Roaring-Silence-Discovering-Mind-Dzog...