Hello!

I've seen a few threads on this board asking questions about graded motor imagery programs and I just thought I'd take a few minutes to share some of the amazing results that my girlfriend has had with this program. A little background: she has had CRPS for about 3 years but had a year-long remission due in part to several high dose ketamine infusions (Dr. K in Florida) and diet changes. Last spring, she ran a 5k and re-inflamed her CRPS. She got another ketamine infusion with Dr. K, but it didn't stick longer than a month or two. Throughout this time I was doing a lot of research (I'm a graduate student and have access to all the medical journals). A treatment that looked promising and was not too expensive was GMI, so we bought the GMI handbook, hand laterality apps for her smartphone, and a portable mirror box. She had previously tried using a mirror box, but it only seemed to inflame her CRPS even more (she was only doing it once or twice a day). She really didn't see much benefit from the GMI program during the first phase of the GMI program (hand laterality), but I insisted she keep trying. We actually had her doing it for several months (she would have setbacks in her laterality accuracy during flares and I really wanted to make sure we had her accuracy and speed up before we moved to the next stages). She started seeing benefits when she moved to imagined movements, on the order of more days with about a 5/10 pain level. The program really took off for us when she moved on to the mirror box phase (after about 2-3 weeks of imagined movements). After having gone through the proper phases, the mirror box worked 110% better than it had previously worked for her. She immediately started feeling more consistently better (to the order of pretty much every day a 5/10 pain level.) By the time she had been doing the mirror box for two weeks she actually reached 0 (that's right 0) pain. Since then, she has had a few periods of some minor transitory flares (nothing too bad relatively... up to about a 5/10) but has been mostly pain free (consecutively for stretches of 3-7 days)!

She is also taking the following supplements: NAC, Vitamin C, CoQ10, Curcumin, Fish Oil, Magnesium, ALA, Vitamin E, Grape Seed Extract, (and maybe a few more I'm forgetting). In addition she takes Tizanidine and Nortriptyline at nighttime to help sleep. She still does her mirror box frequently as well. She also started a low does (10mg) of Alendronate just today... we'll see if it helps some of the results we've achieved sink in.

I know that treatment success is variable and what works for some doesn't work for others, but I just wanted to share our great experience with GMI and encourage anyone interested to look at the "Body in Mind" website (http://www.bodyinmind.org/ look at the "articles" tab) for access to the research on GMI (and ongoing research on other chronic pain related topics). I'm happy to answer any questions about our experience with the program as well. Additionally, she has recently started a blog and has written about her experiences with GMI. If your interested, it can be found here: http://www.dishinguphope.com/2013/01...rsonal-review/