Book Review: Suffered Long Enough by Dr. Bill Rawls

How often have you wished for a doctor who understood what you were going through? I doubt we’d wish chronic pain on anyone, but at the same time, we’d all love to find a doctor who really understands.

Dr. Bill Rawls is that doctor, and while you may not be able to visit him in person, he has shared his experience and advice in book form, as well as through his website. The book is Suffered Long Enough: A physician’s journey of overcoming Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, & Lyme. He also now offers consultations online and by phone, and since this book has published others. 

He begins by sharing his story of going from a very busy doctor to dealing with chronic pain and fatigue and being unable to keep up with a busy practice. He shares that he began researching supplements, herbs, and other alternative options for healing.

He provides the analogy of recovering from chronic fatigue and pain to climbing out of a deep well. It’s straight up and rarely anything to hold onto, and just as you finally get a good grip, you often slip back down.

Dr. Rawls suggests that there are six major issues that need to be addressed poor nutrition, emotional stress, oxidative stress, toxic stress, physical stress, and energy. He addresses these from the standpoint of things that need to be removed, as well as things that need to be added to improve your health and symptoms.

His focus is on diet changes, supplementation, movement, improving sleep, and changing the way you think. Sounds familiar if you read my blog at all.

Overall, I’d say his advice is sound. Much of it is advice I’ve given myself to many. Though we differ on a few things, overall his diet advice is the same as my own – get rid of gluten and processed foods. Eat clean and healthy.

He addresses a number of supplements, explaining what they help with, as well as specifically how to take them. This last part is important since often the suggested dosage for dealing with chronic illness is different from what is on the bottle. He provides suggestions for getting moving (exercising), as well as improving sleep.

Dr. Rawls provides a lot of great info on supplements and he focused most of the book on that topic. A lot of the advice beyond diet and supplements is very surface level advice that we have all likely heard again and again.

If I had to grade this book I’d give it an A+ for information, but a C- for layout and readability. Much of the info about supplements is repetitive (or feels that way), because of the way the book is laid out. The book is structured in a way that approaches each symptom and provides guidance on what supplements to take to help with each specific symptom. Because the same supplements can be used to help several symptoms this results in repetitiveness.

I felt like the book could be about half as long and give all the same advice without needing to repeat. As someone who has researched a lot of this info already, I did find a few new supplements I will look into further. I would say that for someone who is just beginning their chronic illness journey, this would be a good read to get you started, and give you an overview of a direction that will likely help you greatly.

Update: Since I originally published this review, Dr. Rawls has put out a couple more books, including Unlocking Lyme: Myths, Truths, and Practical Solutions for Beating Lyme Disease. I’ve also had the opportunity to try quite a few of his supplements and CBD products, including the Vital Plan Restore Kit. Read the links below for more on my experiences with those and why I continue to recommend all of Dr Rawls books and products. 

Related Posts:

• Review: Vital Plan Select CBD oil products
• The Vital Plan for Chronic Illness
• Unlocking Lyme: Myths, Truths, and Practical Solutions for Beating Lyme Disease