"I was going through a professional, personal and existential middle-age crisis," laments Italian author Carlo Pizzati, who recently penned his sort-of autobiography on living with chronic back pain—a condition many of us suffer from but have reconciled living with. "But, I soon realised," he says, "The most urgent matter at hand was the need to solve my backache problems. Traditional medicine was not giving me the desired results, so I gave alternative cures a try while trying to stay as rational as possible."

His symptoms included a sharp pain in his upper and lower back caused by a combination of scoliosis, lordosis, and spondylosis. Over time, a habitual bad posture worsened, leading to pinched nerves and sciatica. "While working through a complex and painful separation from the mother of my child, I was also spending most of my time writing a screenplay and a novel, which exacerbated the pain [as he was seated for long hours]."