Wager said we don’t fully understand the mechanisms of this, but “we do know that stressors can promote inflammation in the spinal cord and brain, which is linked to greater pain sensations.” Early adversity, such as child abuse, economic hardship, violence and neglect, has also been linked to chronic pain. Basically, your brain circuitry malfunctions, prolonging, amplifying and possibly even creating pain.ĭr. Instead of blood flow, scientists now look to the nervous system to understand chronic pain that isn’t caused by nerve or tissue damage. Sarno’s theory that our brain uses pain to distract us from negative emotions by cutting off blood flow to the muscles is not backed up by science, according to Dr. Pain can take on a life of its own.īut how does the brain cause chronic pain in the first place? Dr. It’s not only been shown to significantly lower pain in people with fibromyalgia and chronic musculoskeletal pain, it’s also considered a best practice for treating chronic pain (along with massage and cognitive behavioral therapy) by the Department of Health and Human Services. Sarno’s method is emotional awareness and expression theory, in which patients identify and express emotions they’ve been avoiding. “I’m sorry, there are a bunch of people for whom Sarno’s method isn’t going to work.” In most people, it’s some confluence of the three,” said Daniel Clauw, a professor of anesthesiology, medicine and psychiatry at the University of Michigan and the director of its Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center. “There are also social and biological reasons for pain. Wager said most scientists now believe that pain isn’t always something that starts in the body and is sensed by the brain it can be a disease in and of itself.Īpproximately 85 percent of back pain and 78 percent of headaches don’t have an identifiable trigger, yet few scientists would say that all or even most chronic pain is purely psychological.
“But that’s different than the idea that your unresolved relationship with your mother is manifesting as pain.”ĭr. “The idea is now mainstream that a substantial proportion of people can be helped by rethinking the causes of their pain,” said Tor Wager, a neuroscience professor at Dartmouth College and the director of its Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Sarno’s claims even hold water? Pain often starts in the brain. The whole time, I worried: If physical therapy failed again, would I have to go back to exhaustively cataloging my woes? Did Dr. My physical therapist assigned me a handful of exercises, and I did them every day. Sarno after that until May of this year, when I found myself back in physical therapy for a pain in my inner thigh. After exorcising a diary’s worth of negative feelings over four months, I was - in spite of my incredulousness - cured. Sarno, or that he had no studies to back up his program.īut I couldn’t deny it worked for me. I didn’t like that no one in the medical community seemed to side with Dr. And I liked the reassurance it gave me that even though my pain didn’t stem from a wonky gait or my sleeping position, it was real. Sarno’s theory: emotional pain causes physical pain. I chose journaling and began writing pages-long lists of everything I was angry, insecure or worried about. By undergoing psychotherapy or journaling about them, he said, you could drag them out of your unconscious - and cure yourself without drugs, surgery or special exercises. Sarno, nearly all chronic pain is caused by repressed emotions. John Sarno, was a rehabilitation physician at New York University and something of an evangelist, touting a methodology bolstered by anecdotes from his practice and passionate testimonials from patients like Howard Stern or Larry David, who described his recovery from back pain as “the closest thing that I’ve ever had in my life to a religious experience.”Īccording to Dr. Then, in 2011, I picked up a library copy of the 1991 best seller “Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection.” It claimed that, in order to distract the sufferer from repressed anxiety, anger or feelings of inferiority, the brain creates pain in the neck, shoulders, back and butt by decreasing blood flow to the muscles and nerves. At one point, I even considered surgery to cut the muscle in half in order to decompress the sciatic nerve that runs underneath. I tried treating it with physical therapy, ultrasound and Botox injections.
For more than a decade, I had a near-constant throbbing in my left piriformis, a small muscle deep in the butt. Every time someone tells me their back’s been giving them trouble, I lower my voice before launching into my spiel: “I swear I’m not woo-woo, but … ”