You cannot always tell a good book by its cover. ‘Integrative Pain Management’ is a succinct title, though somewhat elusive to the casual reader. Four small cover photos provide some further insight - a person in white cloth meditating by water, a woman jogging across fields under blue skies, blueberries and mint floating in a juice shake, and (for context) a hand x-ray with painful joints highlighted in red flare. It seemed less textbook and more promotional pamphlet at a luxury resort and spa! Imagine my surprise to discover a book both thoughtful and insightful.

With over 800 pages of content, this comprehensive text outlines a body, mind and spirit approach to pain management. The editors have structured its 54 chapters into five sections: (1) Pain and Integrative Medicine: Impact and Considerations, (2) Current Understanding and Treatment of Pain, (3) Integrative Evaluations and Considerations, (4) Integrative Therapies and Systems for Pain Management, and (5) Integrative Approaches to Condition Management. The first section includes a general background and has a very interesting section on pain management history in the USA. Section two briefly touches on some aspects of chronic pain, with a nice chapter on the psychosocial mediators of chronic pain. Section 3 focuses on measuring and evaluating pain using integrative approaches. Section 4 is the largest section with a litany of chapters on different integrative therapies for pain management. It is very comprehensive, with chapters ranging from nutrition, exercise, and hormones, to eastern philosophy, acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Finally section 5 discusses how to marry these approaches with conventional pain management treatments, with chapters organised by condition (e.g. headache, cancer-pain) or group (e.g. children, older adults).

Like any multi-author book some chapters read better than others, though overall the book is well-written. An occasional typographical error in the figures is frustrating, though this rarely distracts from the text. The book also comes with a code to access accompanying digital material and some chapters integrate well with the online content. For the pain practitioner planning to take a dip into integrative approaches, I would highly recommend this book.