Best F/X

Anyone who has ever tried to do this can find it overwhelming. However, it can be extremely helpful to both you and your doctor when you have an increase in inflammation or in a extreme flare. What caused the increase in pain? The weather? Something you ate? A new medication? A stressful event?

Ironically, while those of us with pain may find it hard to write down what we are doing, eating, and how we are medicating, other people are on Twitter and are recording what they ate for breakfast, how they are recovering from a cold, and when they are up working at 3 a.m. in the morning. . . and thinking it is fun!

If you have a chronic illness, Twitter can be an amazing tool to use as a pain diary. This social networking tool has been successfully used to help people maintain logs on their diet, exercise, and even the commitment to stop smoking. Why should we not use it to keep accurate records of our chronic illness and pain levels?

Here are 5 steps to use Twitter to understand the causes your pain:

[1] Create an account at Twitter just for your chronic pain logs. If you already have a Twitter account, make a new one, and let it remain private. If you look under "settings" you will see the option to make your account private, meaning that you will have to approve any followers before anyone can see your Twitter account. Since this is private medical information, we recommend not approving anyone. If you are already Twittering this can seem a bit strange because you typically want to increase the number of followers.

[2] Now you can update your account anytime through posts that are 140 characters or less. Submit more than one post if necessary to describe a particular circumstance or outcome. Be sure to set up your account so you can text messages from you cell phone as well.

[3] If you are new to Twitter and don't know where to start, it's easy. Just post about anything you want in the box and click submit. You may want to began with events that are not part of your typical day and how your body has responded. For example, if you awoke with a lot of inflammation, you may ask yourself if the weather was unusual the night before? Did you stay out late with friends the day previously? Did you change your medication? What did you eat for dinner in the evening last night? Post any information that may be valuable to you or your medical team at any point in the future for your treatment.

[4] Before you go to a doctor's appointment, log on to your Twitter account and print out the posts if your doctor would like acopy. Highlight any major changes in your patterns of pain.

[5] if you already use Twitter for personal or business use, consider using a service that can post a message to more than one Twitter account simultaneously. This way your regular tweets that include where you are or what you are doing are automatically posted to your pain diary that resides on Twitter as well.

While there are bound to be some fancy applications for Twitter or other pain log tools in the future of Web 2.0 medicine, with a simple private Twitter account you can start keeping your illness records in just a few minutes at no cost. It's times like this we love the internet.