Back Pain Relief-- Mind Body Approach

Hi, I am Dr. David Schechter, today we are going to see a panel of patients who have been diagnosed with tension myositis syndrome and have been through a successful mind and body treatment program. I brought these group of people together because I thought it would be important for patients who are going to go through this program to learn from some of the techniques and methods that succesful patients have utilized in getting over their problems. Hearing their stories will help us to understand how people going through this process get over their pain. Let me tell you a little bit about my story. Twenty-three years ago, I was a first year Medical student at NYU and I was having knee pain and it was not going away. My outlets were basketball and running and I was finding that I was not able to participate in these activities. These were the hobbies I had that helped to burn off the tension and stress of Medical school and I really started to miss them. Because of the continued pain, I saw the Student Health Doctors at NYU, they diagnosed it as tendonitis and they recommended anti-inflammatory medications. I did not get better. So the next referral was to an Orthopedic Surgeon, who was the New York Yankees team doctor and he examined and they did certain tests and concluded that I should try another course of anti-inflammatory medications and leg strengthening exercises. I diligently did the exercises, my legs got stronger, but the pain did not go away. So in desperation, I walked into the office of Dr. John Sorno, a physician who had lectured to us in the Anatomy course. I knew that he specialized in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, so I went in there hoping to get some specialized Physical Therapy treatment that my solve my knee pain problem so I could return to sports. What I heard that day, not only changed the course of my pain, but also helped focus my medical career because when I told Dr. Sorno about my symptoms and the treatments that I had tried, his comment was, much of this chronic pain is actually psycho-somatic. How do you react to that? And I said, I was a little bit surprised to hear it. But he invited me to attend a lecture seminar that he gives to patients who have been diagnosed as TMS or tension myositis syndrome, so I went to the seminar and what he described to me that evening made a tremendous amount of sense to me in terms of my personality, kind of a worrier, in terms of the symptoms that I had and in terms of a mechanism by which stress and tension could create or perpetuate physical pain usually in the back or neck, sometimes in the legs, sometimes headaches or other symptoms. By the time I left that evening and went home, I felt like a weight was beginning to lift off my shoulders and that weight was my fear and anxiety that my pain in my knees was not going to go away. Within the next few weeks, my pain was essentially gone and I returned to running and playing basketball and the pain gradually went away completely. This made me quite a devotee of this diagnosis and approach and I shared with medical students at NYU and with my professors as well. Many were resistant to the idea. Medicine is quite focused on molecular biology and on the aspects of science that you can look under a microscope and see, and not as concentrated or not as comfortable with psychological approaches and techniques. Nonetheless, I have continued to apply these principles in my practice and now, years later, have developed my own approaches, techniques and methods to treating and diagnosing tension myositis syndrome. What we will see today is the results of those treatments and methods and listening to these panel of patients tell their stories of the pain that they had, how they were diagnosed and what techniques and methods they used to get over the pain.

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