Living Well with Dystonia: A Patient Guide Paperback – March 15, 2010

The author has a high amount of experience with dystonia and the explanations and drawings all helped explain how to diagnosis and cope with the illness. Dystonia is such a nightmarish disability that one book can not alone help someone suffering with it. Tom Seaman's "Diagnosis: Dystonia" goes into more detail than this book and is an excellent detailed and "must have" resource for anyone with dystonia, but this book is easy to whip through to get a quick introduction for understanding dystonia and ways to start healing.

This book serves as a helpful resource for people living with Dystonia. Because Dystonia is not well known, it's important to have a book that has consolidated, updated information. I would recommend that everyone who either suffers from Dystonia or family members who live with someone with Dystonia read this book as a basic guide.

Very informational book. It covered everything.....and helped me to understand why my body is doing things that I didn't tell it to do.THANK YOU>

great book - works well for anyone with Dystonia

This book is so usefull for dystonia patients. Especially, a part of rehabilitation is good. I would like to recomend this book to another doctor and many patients in Japan.

Living Well with DystoniaA Patient GuideBy Daniel Truong, MD, Mayank Pathak, MD, Karen Frei, MD2010 Demos Medical PublishingReview by Debra Louise ScottThe most important question regarding any medical related book is, `Does it help patients, and those who care for their welfare, understand what is happening and give them resources for coping, treatment, if any, and rehabilitation, if possible. The quick answer for this Patient Guide is `Yes'. There are significant nuances in this relatively rare condition that are described from the barely noticeable and often misdiagnosed mild symptoms to the remarkable and spectacularly extraordinary manifestations of a full attack and the discussion about possible genetic connections is very interesting. Various treatments are discussed with their relative effectiveness or lack thereof. A full eight pages are dedicated to helpful resources, and the book provides both an index and a glossary of medical terms pertinent to this condition. There are also patient stories of the various journeys they went through. Most went through numerous doctors and misdiagnoses before finding one that recognized the peculiar anomalies that differentiated to DystoniaThat said, it is painfully obvious that this was written by three different people, only one of whom seems to have any ability to write for the lay person. Some of the entries read like a dry clinic brochure. The writing styles seem to have been meshed together with minimal editing. This becomes especially annoying when one doctor inserts a section into another doctor's work, leaving the reader as confused and disconnected as their disorder does.The illustrations of how nerves connect from the brain to the body are disturbingly reminiscent of late night teenage cartoons. There's a disembodied brain on a spike that has an arm, a disembodied brain, with spike, that has an arm AND a thumb (no, the thumb is not attached to the arm, but floats above it, somewhere where maybe an ear should be) , and a cross section of a brain with, I don't know, macaroni floating in it. Yes, I know what they are SUPPOSED to represent, but I found these drawings decidedly creepy. To be fair, there are many other illustrations that were very helpful.Although the book starts out sounding like "Chicken Soup for the Dystonic Soul", make it past the mushy stuff and settle in for a fairly detailed, if uneven, description of the various manifestations of this neurological movement disorder.

I give this product a 5 star rating because, I purchased this book for a relative with 'Dystonia' and she said that it is very helpful. It covers most of the different types on 'Dystonia' and gives you different ways to cope with them. It has some good relaxation techniques among other things, which she has found very useful. The book is of good quality and is written very well. Thank you.

Not long been diagnosed with Dystonia found this book very helpful to understand my condition

I was recently diagnosed with cervical dystonia and this book is so very informative and in helping you to understand the disorder. It is well written and easy to understand, so glad that I found it!