Psychosomatic Back Pain

spinal stenosis

There is a growing epidemic of back pain plaguing the healthcare system around the world. Common back pain is the number one reason for an employee to miss work and the second most common reason for a doctor visit. Lower back pain, in particular, has created an army or partially and fully disabled individuals that have been swept under medicine's rug for far too long. Medical science has certainly excelled in the diagnosis of an abundant variety of spinal abnormalities, injuries and degenerative conditions. However, when it comes to providing treatment to the patient, symptomatic relief is the rule and a true cure is almost unheard of. The primary reason why doctors and complementary therapists have such poor treatment results when it comes to back pain relief is the vehement denial of the existence of psychosomatic pain.

The mind and the body interact constantly. Medicine acknowledges some of these interactions while ignoring others. We all know that blushing and sweating occur when we are embarrassed. The heart will race and the blood pressure will rise when we are frightened. Having a stressful day can bring on a common headache or general gastrointestinal distress. Not to mention, the entire sexual process is a series of physical reactions brought on entirely due to psychological causation. Medical professionals chose to ignore the possibility that the mind can actually create pain in the body. This separation of the intellectual, emotional and physical goes against proven scientific evidence and is the reason why doctors can not stop back pain from ruining countless lives. It is truly a case of selective knowledge based upon how this information will affect established treatments within the healthcare industry.

Acknowledging the idea that the mind can produce physical symptoms completely goes against accepted doctrine that the body is a machine which can be fine tuned by medical engineers. The mind and body interact when it is convenient for doctors to accept, but when it cuts into their economic bottom line, there is a problem. After all, back pain is big business and long term treatment regimens, which are so common for patients to endure, rack up sizeable profits. If back pain could suddenly be cured through non-medical, non-pharmaceutical and non-surgical means, what would become of this multi-billion dollar industry? It is for this reason that most medical and alternative healthcare providers continue to claim that back pain is almost always the result of some physical defect such as degenerated discs, herniated discs, spinal arthritis, facet joint degeneration, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, piriformis syndrome, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, nerve compression, sciatica and the list goes on and on.

The reality of long term chronic back pain is that it is rarely caused by a physical injury or degenerative process. Sure, there may have been an injury at one time, but the chronic pain is perpetuated by the mind, not the body. The nearly universal occurrence of many of these spinal abnormalities in the population makes it difficult to take them seriously as the exclusive cause of painful symptoms. If we all have degeneration in our spines, how come only some of us develop pain? Medicine has blamed treatment-resistant back pain on these coincidental and mostly innocent back pain scapegoat conditions for too long. If the diagnosis was accurate, why do all the treatments fail? Most patients with long term pain do not recover, ever. Patients are left with growing pain, fear, dread, anxiety and an uncertain future after wasting vast quantities of time and money pursuing every possible approach to pain relief with limited or no success. It is high time for a paradigm shift in the way we view back pain and the entire mind/body process in general.

Luckily, there is a cure for this type of emotionally induced pain. It is not medical, alternative or complementary. There are no drugs, surgery or physical treatments required. Using the term made famous by Dr. John Sarno at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center, the cure for psychosomatic back pain is Knowledge Therapy. This treatment involves teaching the patient why they are experiencing their pain and how to cure it themselves. The basis of the treatment comes from the field of modern psychology and therein lies the conflict with physical medical science. Patients are taught to uncover and deal with repressed feelings, memories, and emotionally charged sensitive issues in their subconscious minds. It is these issues that create the need for physical symptoms in order to protect the individual's consciousness from feeling the full burden of repressed emotional pain locked away in the mind. In essence, Knowledge Therapy takes the ability to heal out of the hands of doctors and places it successfully into the needy and eternally grateful hands of suffering patients. If you are agonizing over unresolved treatment-resistant back pain, learn more about this revolutionary therapy that has changed the lives of millions, including this author.