Make Your Doctor’s Life Easy! Twitter About Your Illness

If chronic illness or pain is a part of your life, the odds are that at one point you have been requested by a physician to keep a log about your activities and pain levels, especially what led up to your pain being most intense. He may have suggested that you write down specific activities, your diet and exercise behaviors, and even your patterns of sleep.

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?

It is somewhat ironic that while we may find it a burdensome task to record what we are eating, who we are with, how much we slept, and how we are feeling, millions of people are doing this daily on Twitter. They write what they ate for lunch, if they have a migraine, and if they are up at 2 a.m. working. . . and they call it fun!

Now is the time for those of us who have a chronic illness to let Twitter worked for us! This social networking tool has been used to help people with dieting, exercise, and even encouragement to stop smoking. But it may best benefit those of us with illness, who need to record enough of our life to figure out what is causing an increase in pain.

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] You are now ready to start writing your posts. You cannot write more than 140 characters, however, this keeps it a simple task and not too overwhelming. Feel free to use it in any way necessary, for example, submitting more than one post to describe a special circumstance. You can send posts from your cell phone, not just from the computer, so set up this option in your account to make the most of it.

[3] If you don’t know where to start, begin by posting about any major events or behaviors that are not part of your typical day, and how your body responded to them. For example, if you awake feeling horrible, ask yourself has the weather change significantly? Twitter the weather. Are you taking the same amount of medication as you typically do? Were you active or solitary yesterday? Post whatever information may be valuable to you and your medical team at any right in your treatment.

[4] Before a doctor’s visit, simply log on to Twitter and print out the posts if your doctor wants a copy. Highlight any major changes or influences in your patterns.

[5] If you have another Twitter account for personal or business you may want to consider a service that can post to more than one Twitter account at a time so your regular tweets that share where you are and what you’re doing are easy to copy to your pain log 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.