Dr. John Sarno specializes in musculoskeletal disorders, specifically neck pain, back pain, arthritis and chronic pain. He is most well known for the development, diagnosis and treatment of the controversial psychosomatic condition Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS).. He is a well known figure in the field of pain management because of his unorthodox and controversial approach to the diagnosis and treatment of back pain. Sarno maintains that most pain is caused by psychological symptoms rather than physical symptoms.
Dr. Sarno’s research has primarily focused on TMS, a condition which causes chronic back, neck and limb pain that is not relieved by standard medical techniques. Sarno’s treatment modalities are not recognized by the mainstream medical association. He claims to have treated over 10,000 patients by educating them on the psychological and emotional roots of their pain. He has treated some famous people including, Howard Stern, the late Anne Bancroft and the writer Janette Barber.
Sarno was born in 1923 and graduated from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1950. In 1965, he became the Director of the Outpatient Department at Rusk. While at Rusk, Sarno was exposed to a large number of people who were suffering from chronic back pain. Many of these patients failed to find relief from standard medical treatments. He spent several years diagnosing and treating patients with chronic back pain with limited success. He concluded that modern medicine was not adequately addressing this medical issue. Frustrated, he took a closer look and decided that the pain people were experiencing was not in fact physiological, but triggered by the stress in their lives. He believed that his patients' mental stresses were manifesting themselves physically. He tested his hypothesis and created a new treatment for chronic back pain sufferers.
Sarno is currently a professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at the New York School of Medicine and an attending physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. He has written several books, including: Mind over Back Pain, his first book about TMS and, Healing Back Pain: The Mind Body Connection. He has sold over 150,000 copies of these two publications.
~ Amanda Miller
