Studies Show Patients With Support Groups Feel Less Pain

(NewsUSA) - Life-changing medical diagnoses often result in social isolation, which can be detrimental to your health. In fact, recent research shows that patients experience more physical pain when they are not connected to a network of support.

According to studies published in the "Journal of the American College of Surgeons," the size of a patient's social circle affects their physical pain levels and healing times. Twenty percent of the patients with the smallest social circles reported feeling twice the amount of pain of better-connected patients. Unsupported patients also faced longer hospital stays.

Patients sometimes think they are a burden to their loved ones, and caregivers may feel like they have no one with whom to discuss their challenges and frustrations. Updating long-distance friends and family can prove difficult for people under stress. But the Internet has helped patients and their families form supportive communities and find others in similar situations.

In fact, some studies have found that 75 percent of online health searchers use the Internet to connect with those who have first-hand experience with their particular health challenge. And millions of people are finding their connections through CarePages.com, an online community of people coming together to share challenges, hopes and triumphs during a major health event. Patients and caregivers journal their experience and receive messages of support from their personal network of friends and family as well as from the larger community of people facing similar situations.

CarePages.com also has real-time discussion forums focused on topics such as parenting, cancer, emotional health and spirituality. The online community provides multiple ways to seek, give and receive emotional support. It helps friends and family understand what to say and do, such as sending thoughtful gifts from the online gift shop.

Personal Web sites allow patients and caregivers the opportunity to offer real-time updates, upload recent photos and receive messages of support. When a member posts to their CarePages Web site, an e-mail automatically notifies every visitor in their guestbook who is following the journey.

One member, whose husband underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat his cancer, wrote that CarePages.com "really changed an isolating cancer diagnosis into something that was very community-oriented."

For more information, visit www.CarePages.com.

"Article By: NewsUSA"