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Quote by John E Sarno, M.D

“In my experience, structural abnormalities of the spine rarely cause back pain. That ought not surprise us, for this epidemic of back pain is very new. Somehow the human race managed to get through the first million years or so of its evolution without a problem, but if the structural diagnoses are correct, something happened to the spine during the last evolutionary eyeblink, and it has begun to fall apart. This idea is untenable. One suspects that these spine abnormalities have always been there but were never blamed for pain, because there was no pain to blame them for. Fifty years ago, back pain was not very common, but, more importantly, nobody took it seriously. The epidemic of back pain is due to the enormous increase in the incidence of TMS during the past thirty years, and, ironically, the failure of medicine recognize and diagnose it has been a major factor in that increase. Instead of TMS, the pain has been attributed primarily to a variety of structural defects of the spine. It's essential to know that almost all of the structural abnormalities of the spine are harmless. (page 117)”

Quote by John E Sarno, M.D

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Healing Back Pain

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“Though the back sufferer isn't aware of it, it is generally known by students of the spine that the last intervertebral disc, between the fifth lumbar vertebra and the sacrum, is more or less degenerated in most people by the age of twenty. Discs are structures located between the bodies of spinal bones to take up the shock. They are firmly attached to the vertebral bodies above and below, and in no way can they "slip." Enclosed by a tough, fibrous outer shell, there is a thick fluid inside, which is what absorbs the shock. The discs at the lower end and in the neck, because of all the activity in those locations, begin to wear out at an early age, some by the age of twenty, as stated. (page 118)”

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“For example, the diagnostic study (CT scan or MRI) might show a herniated disc at the interspace L4-L5, one of the possible consequences of which might be weakness in the muscles that elevate the foot and the toes. The examination, however, revealed that not only those muscles were weak but so were the ones in the back of the leg, muscles that are not energized by the spinal nerve passing by interspace L4-L5. Then when I found on examination that the buttock muscles in the vicinity of the sciatic nerve were painful to pressure, it was apparent that the nerve disturbance was not coming from the region of the herniated disc but from the sciatic nerve that serves both sets of muscles. (page 120)”

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“It may be tempting but is inadvisable to attribute symptoms to normal aging phenomena. In my experience, disc degeneration is no more pathological than graying hair or wrinkling skin. In recent years, there have been numerous reports the medical literature of herniated discs in patients with no history of back pain. They were discovered inadvertently on CT or MRI studies done to investigate other parts of the body. (page 122)”

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“In the group of disorders referred to as tendonitis, the tendon is correctly identified as the offending part, but the reason given for the pain is incorrect. The anatomy is right, but the diagnosis is wrong. It is generally assumed that the painful tendon is inflamed because of overuse. So the treatment is to immobilize and rest the part and/or inject the tendon with a steroid (cortisone). Relief is often only temporary. Many years ago, the suspicion dawned on me that tendonitis (more properly called tendonalgia) might be part of TMS when a patient reported that not only had his back pain resolved with treatment but also his elbow had ceased to hurt. I put this to the test and, indeed, found that I could get resolution of most tendonalgias. I now consider tendon/ ligament to be the third type of tissue involved in TMS. Common sites of tendonalgia are the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle, and foot. (page 138)”

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“Inflammation must be discussed, for it is the explanation presented for many cases of upper and lower back pain and is the basis for the prescription of both steroidal (cortisone) and nonsteroidal (such as ibuprofen) anti-inflammatory drugs. Because of the magnitude of the back pain problem, these medications are widely used. Experience with the diagnosis and treatment of TMS makes it clear that the source of the pain is neither spinal structures nor inflammation. An inflammatory process is an automatic reaction to disease or injury; it is basically a protective, healing process. The response to an invading bacteria or virus is an inflammation. (page 140)”

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“Pain relief is the goal of all treatments, but treatments to relieve pain are designed to take away pain per se. Generally, this is symptomatic treatment and, therefore, poor medicine unless it is administered for humanitarian purposes. The use of morphine, Demerol, or other strong analgesics is certainly justified when there is excruciating pain but not as a definitive treatment. Acupuncture appears to work as a local anesthetic. In other words, it blocks the transmission of pain nerve impulses to the brain. If one is dealing with a chronic disease for which no relief of pain can be expected, this is a good treatment. For the typical back patient, it can give temporary relief but it does nothing about the underlying process, the cause of the pain. (page 145)”

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“Robert Ader, a research psychologist at the University of Rochester, was engaged in an experiment in which he was trying to condition rats to dislike saccharin-sweetened water. This was similar to the classic experiment of Pavlov in which he conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. In order to develop an aversion to the saccharin, Dr. Ader injected the rats with a chemical that made them nauseated so that they associated the sweet water with nausea. What he didn't realize until later was that the chemical be injected, cyclophosphamide, also suppressed the rats immune systems, so that they were dying mysteriously. But the striking thing was that now all he had to do was feed the rats saccharin-sweetened water and their immune systems would be suppressed, even though they had not been injected with the chemical, because they had learned (been conditioned) to associate the sweet water with the nausea-producing chemical. Now, simply feeding saccharin could produce suppression of the immune system. This was a landmark discovery, for it demonstrated that a brain phenomenon, in this case aversion to a taste, could control the immune system. (page 183)”

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“One report that particularly impressed me appeared in the prestigious journal Science in April 1982 by authors Visintainer, Volpicelli, and Seligman. They described a group of rats, all suffering from the same cancer, that were exposed to annoying electric shock under two different ex- perimental conditions; one group could escape from it, and the other had to take it until it stopped. Both groups got exactly the same dose of shock; the ability to escape from it was the only difference between the two groups. Accord- ing to the authors, "Rats receiving inescapable shock were only half as likely to reject the tumor and twice as likely to die as rats receiving escapable shock or no shock. Only 27 percent of the rats given inescapable shock rejected the tumor, compared to 63 percent of the rats given escapable shock and 54 percent of the rats given no shock." The clear implication of the study was that the im- mune systems of the rats that were more emotionally stressed were less efficient, since it is the effectiveness of the immune system that determines whether a cancer will be thrown off or not. If this is the case with rats, imag- ine how much more important the emotions must be in humans. (page 185)”

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