The Optimized Patient: How to Prepare for, Survive, and Recover from Spine Surgery

Our bodies are programmed to heal, but too often we are unaware that we are working against our own healing. The damaging effects of incisions, anesthesia, antibiotics, and opioids demand that you optimize before and after surgery for your best recovery. No matter how perfect the surgery, your surgeon needs your commitment and help to achieve your goal of a pain-free life.

The Optimized Patient offers insights from a team of six spine patients, two physical therapists, a chiropractor and a nutritionist—all dedicated to helping you prepare to be an Optimized Patient. In the time it takes to read this book, you will have gained the insights from all those patients, surgeons, and experts as if you were in a small group setting where you could ask all the questions you wanted.

What you end up with is the ability to make a well-informed decision about whether or not spine surgery is right for you. And, should you make that decision, you will have the best information possible to achieve what every spine patient wants: to be you again.

No matter how perfect the surgery, your surgeon needs your commitment and help to achieve your goal of a pain-free life.

Foreword by two-time NBA champion and former spine surgery patient, Bill Walton. Afterword by MMA Hall of Famer Nate "Rock" Quarry.

Praise for the book

Three times Mr. Warren has made the commitment to optimize in order to support his clinical recovery phase. What he has learned is critically important to anyone facing the challenge of spine surgery. The Optimized Patient is a straight-forward, super-informative and enjoyable book written to help you achieve your best possible surgical outcome.

—Dr. Sanjay Khurana, MD, Spine Surgeon