Published on April 25th 2024
Written by Jesse Driessen
There are so many different places you can look for help with a chronic health condition; blogs, health organisation websites, public health resource pages, Instagram and TikTok influencers, Facebook Groups, Discord Channels, and Subreddits. The options are endless, so how are you even meant to find the best – or most useful – resources for you?
As someone with chronic health issues, I’ve spent hours/years looking through search results pages on Google and have followed an endless number of spoonies on social media.
On this page, with input from the Bearable community and team, I’ve tried to collate a list of different chronic illness resources that I’ve found helpful on my own chronic illness journey. I just hope that this might make it easier for you to find the most useful chronic illness resources for you.
There are tons of great chronic illness blogs and we recommend that you check as many of them out as possible. Not only to support as many people with chronic illnesses as possible but because they cover such a broad array of experiences that your perfect blog might be different to mine.Â
However, there are a handful of blogs that I’ve ended up returning to over the years and these include:
Natasha is a London-based Journalist, Podcaster & Chronic Illness Blogger who previously worked for the BBC. More recently, she’s begun writing on Substack as well as hosting a podcast about living well with chronic illness, The Rest Room.
Natasha’s content mostly focuses on conversations with experts to create resources to help people navigate their chronic illnesses.Â
Natasha has a ton of great advice about the benefits of pacing for managing chronic fatigue and chronic pain. Including an article, she wrote for the Bearable blog, back in 2021.
Liz – who writes the Despite Pain blog – has lived with chronic pain for most of her life and her work focuses on sharing insights and resources which make living with pain more manageable.
This includes extensive pages of pain management techniques and resources. Considering that chronic pain is one of the most common chronic conditions, resources like this are a godsend.
If you live with Trigeminal Neuralgia, Coeliac Disease, or Chronic Pain – or even if you’re just looking for more information about these conditions – the Despite Pain blog is the best place to get started.
A Balanced Belly is an extensive blog about Crohn’s and IBD by Jenna Farmer. Her articles cover everything from recipes, travel guides, and pregnancy for people living with chronic digestive conditions. There’s even a page of free resources and discount codes which includes e-books and symptom tracking worksheets.
You might also recognise Jenna from the articles she’s written for The Guardian, Healthline, and Happiful Magazine or from the Chronic Illness Communities she participates in on social media.
Amongst other things, Kate lives with rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, anaemia of chronic inflammation, asthma, and chronic pain. For this reason, Kate’s blog covers a broad array of helpful topics including patient advocacy and how to create your own chronic illness blog.
What I most love about Kate’s work is that she’s an amazing advocate for people with chronic illnesses and her blog helps people in the community to better advocate for themselves and others too.Â
The thing that I like most about A Chronic Voice is that Sheryl – who has lived with Lupus for more than 10 years – extensively documents her experiences with surgery. This includes her advice on managing depression and boredom following surgery.Â
However, A Chronic Voice goes much deeper than this and includes insights into the experiences of being a caregiver to someone with a chronic illness and even the experience of returning to school as a person with a chronic illness. If you’re looking for advice for almost any aspect of life with a chronic condition, chances are that Sheryl has you covered.
If you’re a budding chronic illness content creator, A Chronic Voice also accepts guest posts and could be a great way to share your experiences with a bigger audience.
Invisibly Me focuses less on the lived experiences of invisible illness – although Caz does share regular updates about her rare disease and chronic bowel conditions (and her pets) – and more on managing the realities of life with a chronic illness.
This includes helpful product reviews, information about navigating the cost of living crisis, and a whole section of the blog dedicated to memes and funny videos for those unavoidable days when your symptoms are flaring.
Caz is also an amazing advocate for hidden illnesses and regularly posts about the – unfortunately taboo – reality of living with a stoma.
To be honest, this list could be much, much longer but the six influencers recommended below are the ones whose content I keep coming back to. These chronic illness influencers have some of the most honest, relatable, and funniest content, even if they don’t have the biggest following (yet).
Like many of the other recommendations in this article, Dani is a spoonie who’s combined her experiences living with chronic illness and her skillset (as a physical therapist) to help give back to the community.Â
Dani describes herself as a chronic illness mindset coach helping you accept your diagnosis and thrive. For me, this touches on one of the hardest aspects of the chronic illness journey; acceptance of your chronic condition.
Dani’s feed is full of videos that help you to shift your mindset and that’s why she’s one of my favourite chronic illness influencers.Â
At a glance, @chronic4u‘s content might look like lots of other chronic illness humour videos you see on social media. However, for every funny, relatable video about living with a chronic illness, Ila also has a video advocating for the spoonie community.Â
From highlighting the need for better employment rights for people with hidden illnesses to giving us a behind-the-scenes look at blood drawing. Ila’s found a great balance between entertaining and honest, which is probably why her follower count has grown so rapidly.
She also makes great apparel.
Maddy might not have the most followers but what I’ve always loved about her videos is that they feel like you’re face-timing a friend.Â
Whether she’s sharing an update on her recent health struggles or giving an honest look at the day in the life with gastroparesis, Maddy’s ‘straight-to-camera’ style is a nice break from some of the more ‘viral’ spoonie content.
Quoted in a number of her posts, I also love her outlook on living life with a chronic illness;Â life is tough, but so are we.
Jess Brien is possibly the busiest chronic illness influencer on this list. She not only hosts her own podcast (That’s So Chronic) but she also performs at the Adelaide Fringe Festival AND watched 52 documentaries in 52 weeks 😂
Since day one, Jess has been on a mission to share her experiences living with chronic pain and her transparent videos about test results and her subversion of social media trends make her one of my favourite chronic pain influencers.
Allison‘s an inspiration to spoonies everywhere and her content is a brutally honest look at the reality of living with chronic illness. By sharing every detail of her ongoing chronic illness journey, Allison advocates for us all. Helping people to identify symptoms, share support with the community, and spotlight issues with the medical system. If you only follow one chronic illness influencer, it should be @microcatmachine.
A chronic illness influencer like no other, Gemma Correl creates incredibly relatable illustrations about living with Anxiety, Depression, and women’s health.
My mental health issues often make me feel incredibly alienated and – more than anything else – Gemma’s illustrations help to remind me that these feelings are universal for other people with Anxiety and Depression.Â
Scrolling through her feed is a nice reminder that I’m not alone and that there’s a whole community of people just like me.Â
Honestly, some of the best resources I’ve found have actually been on chronic illness blogs and social channels. However, there are some organisations that do a fantastic job of providing resources for specific conditions. Especially if you’re just getting started on your chronic illness journey.
This is maybe the most obvious resource to mention but that’s for good reason. For the longest time, the Mind organisation have been providing information and support to people with mental health conditions and – quite simply – that’s why they’re at the top of this list.
As well as a great depth of super accessible information about different mental health issues, they also have a ton of tips for everyday living and advice for how to seek different kinds of support.
The US Pain Foundation’s mission is to ’empower, educate, connect, and advocate for people living with chronic conditions that cause pain’ and they’re not messing around. They have programs for everything from advocacy and empowerment, to support and education.Â
Their resources page includes 101 information about different pain management options, free mindfulness meditations, and downloadable pain management plans. If you’re living with chronic pain and need some support, The US Pain Foundation is a great place to start.
StuffThatWorks uses crowd-sourced data from millions of people with different chronic health conditions to identify the most (and least) effective treatments for every chronic illness.
If you’re also looking to identify potential triggers and co-morbidities (i.e. commonly occurring health conditions) this is one of the most useful places to start.
Unlike health articles about your chronic condition, Stuff That Works cuts away the fluff and lets you get directly into the info you want about your condition.
This may be another obvious recommendation, but the CDC’s health topics page makes it really easy to look up any chronic health condition and access information and resources about symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and management. These resources include patient toolkits with downloadable PDFs that help you prepare for appointments and keep track of treatments.
Sometimes, the thing you most need as someone living with a chronic health condition is to speak with someone who understands. Whether that’s to get something off your chest, seek some advice, or just find someone to laugh at chronic illness memes with – chronic illness communities can be the backbone of managing day-to-day life with a chronic condition.
The Mighty has more than 3.5 million members discussing more than 700 different health conditions. Quite simply, it’s one of the most trusted sources for advice on healthcare because 99% of the content is created by people – like you and me – with chronic health issues. If you’re looking for advice, guidance, support, memes, articles, or really anything at all, it’s probably on The Mighty.
Bearable’s own journey began on Reddit and one of the biggest and most trusted communities is r/ChronicIllness. Plus, because Reddit is anonymous it’s a great place to ask for seek guidance on issues that might otherwise be personal, private, or sensitive. Beyond that, it’s also just a great place to stay up to date on anything happening in the Chronic Illness community.
Once you’re up to speed on r/ChronicIllness, you’ll likely also find other, condition-specific subs such as r/Endo, r/Migraine, and r/Anxiety. All of which are huge communities in their own right.
As with everything else we do here at Bearable, we always want your input on the resources we create.Â
If there’s a blog, website, influencer, or really any type of resources that you think should be on this list, please let us know.Â
You can get in touch with us to let us know about your own favourite chronic illness resources at support@bearable.appÂ
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