Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
His theory goes like this, there is way more back pain now (actually late 70s) then there had been. Physical problems can't explain the increase. You've been diagnosed as having disk problems? That's circular. Your back hurts so you see a doctor who sees abnormal disks and then wants to operate. But there are a ton of people with abnormal disks and no pain.
I am entirely a non-touchy feely guy. I ate Ibuprofen. I believe in doctors. But this worked for me. If someone has had surgery I don't try and tell them- they don't want to hear. But if you are headed in that direction it is worth the read. Basically, for a month or so you need to fight through the pain. Do everything you want to do, and "argue" with your brain.
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It's not actually that I was having back pain and decided to see a doctor. My back spasmed in the middle of the night, I fell out of bed, and was unable to move. I could not walk and stand up straight and, yes, I was experiencing crippling pain. The doctor did an MRI and showed me that one of my disks had split open and a significant part of the inside had squeezed out -- I could see this myself on the MRI. He said that the part that had squeezed out impinged a nerve root and caused the muscles in my back to spasm and the completely lock up as a protective mechanism. He gave me steroids to deal with the acute inflammation, which was exacerbating the situation. And he did want to operate. So I went to another doctor who said that you are in good shape and can probably manage the herniation through physical therapy and core work. Which I have done. Believe me, I have plenty of known and as yet unknown emotional problems, but I am skeptical that these are what caused my issues. Instead, there seems to be a pretty simple physical explanation for my problem, and once I learned what it was, I learned how to change my life to lessen the chance of it re-occurring. And of course there are lots of people with abnormal disks that do not have pain because, for example, there are varying degrees of herniations, and not all herniations impinge on nerve roots, etc.
I understand GGG's point, too, about training your mind to try to disregard the pain signals your brain is sending to alert you of a problem, but that seems to be a different issue than what Sarno was saying, which is that most of back pain is not caused by physical problems but by emotional issues. I recognize that I likely have an oversimplified view of Sarno.
