Does anyone know of any RLS research based on Dr Sarno's work "The Mind Body Prescription" ? He is a professor of Clinical Rehabilitation at New York University, School of Medicine. And has written a couple of best selling books on his work.
I may be grasping at straws here but his ideas have transformed the lives of several fiends and acquaintances of mine. People with terrible back pain, for example, who, without resorting to surgery, are now pain free.
Despite my skepticism .......
Very briefly: The theory is that our bodies invent pain to distract us from anger caused by serious psychological trauma in our lives . It seems it is possible to get conscious control over this otherwise automated and unconscious physical response to trauma.
Is it possible that RLS could be caused by a similar unconscious physical response to a psychological issue? We know the mind is capable of some pretty weird shit so why not?
Some of Sarno's younger colleagues have also claimed that the anger can be contemporary and not the result some childhood event. According to this version of the theory, having to play nicely in a hostile work environment can trigger unconscious but debilitating physical symptoms. Backs, shoulders, hips and knees are all well established targets!
Is it possible that RLS is driven by a similar mind/body mechanism?
I know it sounds a bit flaky, but the weird thing is that there is serious evidence to suggest that Dr Sarno's methodology works.
Could it work on RLS? Anyone tried it? Any research papers?
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welschrispy
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I’m pretty sceptical that all pain is manufactured by the body to distract from psychological trauma, but after dealing with and managing pain after disc problems in my back, it was very clear that it can feel much worse if we are in a bad place mentally e.g. stressed by work as you suggest or in the grip of anxiety. When we feel threatened our sympathetic nervous system can go into overdrive which can greatly amplify the effects of pain and worry and there are well established therapies such as CBT which help people manage pain and anxiety by understanding our response to it. We probably all have a degree of ache and pain in our joints but from personal experience it can feel much worse if our bodies are on high alert and our nerves sensitised by pain. However it’s a stretch from there to RLS being a result of trauma, especially in my case when it’s not painful, just an irresistible urge. Many people have reported that their RLS is worse when they are stressed but there could be many reasons for that including not sleeping because of worry, and then it would also be difficult to explain why dopamine agonists so reliably relieve symptoms when you first take them, when clearly they don’t affect psychological trauma in any way, or indeed when 60% of people benefit from iron supplementation. Unless of course the result of trauma is a reduction in dopamine levels.
As my divorce raged full-on, I was completely crippled by intense back pain. I was bedridden and lost 40 lbs. A very wise friend told me to get out of bed and gave me Dr. Sarno's "Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection". I am a scientist and was skeptical, but I read and read. I also studied Sarno on the Internet. Within two days, the back pain was gone. I was very weak, but it had worked. Seven years on and no more back pain.
My RLS began many years before, as my marriage was falling apart. I will now apply Dr. Sarno's theories to my RLS. Currently, my RLS is gone: Harvard Sleep Center (Dr. John Winkelman) no pramipexole. 2 iron infusions, 2x 600 Gabapentin, and dropping/substituting several other meds. Prior to my office visit, I had studied this blog VERY carefully (thank you Sue and others) and read Dr. Winkelman's papers on the internet. I also had fresh Iron Panel results from my primary care doctor.
When I was seen at Dr. Winkelman's office, I was prescribed two Iron Infusions. I now have zero RLS, BUT I will begin immediately to apply Dr. Sarno's theories to my RLS, just in case it tries to come back.
Thank you welschrispy for reminding me about this important tool that I have!
I have a childhood complex PTSD history that I only recently uncovered as an adult. This type of trauma has ruled my life in many ways including insomnia. But working on it for the past three years i’ve come to understand that my RLS (along with other maladies that come and go) is clearly a mind body issue.
It would take me a lot of writing here to explain, but in a nutshell I can see and feel the direct link between the trauma and RLS as it’s severity comes and goes as I go through this healing process and I’m now taking less medication. When I look at the data point that three in five people on earth have had some form of emotional, physical or sexual abuse trauma it makes me suspicious about the myriad of RLS remedies that may actually be past trauma stored in the body.
Trauma can take all forms and many people don’t understand that they even have this history. Essentially western medicine has been treating all kinds of maladies not realizing that the source of it is embedded trauma in the body. Fortunately, a lot of medical systems are adopting trauma informed care which is such a great important first step.
A great book on the most recent and astoundingly effective treatment of trauma, “ The body keeps the score” provides a detailed view of exactly how this mind body Interface works. A long very academic read, but here is a link to a really well written summary.
Thanks to all of you who replied to my post. Thank you particularly to "4 in the morning" for the link. My wife had terrible back pain in her forties and used Sarno's method. She just kept reading the book through and that was enough. She became pain free. I have the right sort of profile with a history of PTSD and work place full of stress.
I was very skeptical at first but after waiting a year for hip surgery I was told by the surgeon that I didn't need surgery and to go away and exercise! So why am I in so much pain that I can hardly walk some days? My wife had been telling me to read her Sarno book (She told me again and again and again!) so I am trying it and it seems to be working.
The world gets stranger the older I become! I now have this note on my bathroom mirror:
"It aint necessarily so..."
I am so surprised by the results that I now plan to try the idea on my chronic RLS. and I have to admit that writing to you all was a ploy . It's a first step.
We both have academic backgrounds and there is much to be overcome.....It still seems a bit flaky to my mind. But hey..whatever works and reading through your posts on this site it is clear that many of us are running out of options.
Come on you skeptics... what do we have to loose?
May I suggest that if any of us try the idea out in practice that we keep posting and perhaps even make separate contact so as not to bore everyone else to death. It also occurs to me that this could be a good subject for a small Zoom group.? But that is for later.
I am going to put some time into this and report back. (It may take a while!). Here looks like a good place to begin.
themarginalian.org/2016/06/...
Thank you all once again for your encouraging response.
I believe Dr. Sarno has passed away. His popular book "Healing Back Pain" is a classic. I have a friend who couldn't even get out of bed his back pain was so bad. I suggested the book and his back pain vanished! Many people get relief just from reading the book. For RLS or insomnia - maybe.
I'm very familiar with his work and that of his colleagues.
I would say that for me my RLS isn't a psychosomatic or mind body connection condition. I have people in my family that have it, who have had no trauma and are very well adjusted, happy people.
I tend to veer on the side of one brush can't tar an army. In other words, just because it may be the case with one person, doesn't mean it is with every person.
Interestingly back pain is associated with menopause, it takes women usually 5 years before they realise they've been going through perimenpause. And, at that point they may engage with HRT or other strategies. Funnily enough that's usually when the back pain subsides.
However, studies have repeatedly shown that people typically don't engage in 1 strategy to help their health and wellbeing. They tend to engage with many. So their life style is changed and they begin to eat better, drink more water, move more, rest mindfully, spend more time outdoors etc. If a person begins to engage in mental health strategies to deal with menopause, help their overall wellbeing and they take up more frequent walking - can we pick out which of these strategies helped the back pain? They didn't take up mental health therapy to treat the back pain but the back pain subsides.
I hope I'm being clear. Let me know if I'm not.
There's no harm in using their techniques and if you gain benefit, great.
Unfortunately pseudo scientific nonsense spreads like wild fire amongst health professionals, and that’s what I have against this approach. Psychiatrists and psychologists are now ‘experts’ on physical health issues and medical doctors in the field of physical diseases are ‘experts’ on psychological issues, and this complete mess of incompetent interdisciplinary ‘professional points of view’ is the result of speculations about the mind body connection that no one truly understands but ‘like’ because it’s simple and puts all the responsibility on the patient.
I feel anger because no one listens and no one tries to help, not because of past trauma. This is called medical ptsd. I’m 57 and absolutely do not want incompetent, imbecilic health practitioners digging into my childhood for reasons they ‘believe’ are valid. Note that I said ‘believe’. Sorry if I’m being harsh.
Yes this is a little harsh but you should know your anger speaks volumes and I would not have bothered to respond if I didn't feel so sorry for you.
I shall ignore your attempt to humiliate me personally but your contempt for women is, unforgivable and brings to mind the atavistic notion of "hysteria". As you probably know there is a history to that sort of thinking but the idea has (thankfully!) been largely discredited. It may surprise you to know that now days most people "believe" that women have the intelligence to know the difference between mind and body even if some men haven't a clue.
But then Feminism combines politics and psychology and this may be a bit interdisciplinary for your taste.
Speaking of "wildfire" Climatology is, I believe an interdisciplinary subject would you dismiss the professionals in that field also as imbecilic ? Should meteorologist ignore chaos theory, mathematics and the wisdom of First Nation people?
And yet you dismiss interdisciplinary thinking in Medicine as imbecilic nonsense. Are you seriously suggesting that the medical profession return to their pre-Freudian ideas about the body?
OK Sarno's ideas are pretty out there but, as any RLS sufferer will tell you, we don't exactly have a surfeit of tried and trusted cures and I suggest that most of us have the intelligence to know what works and what doesn't.
Last but not least, I doubt you can see how incredibly transparent you are being?
Your insistence that you and your family and friends are trauma free is revealing as is your fear of "digging" into your childhood memories. Your contempt for me and for others on this site coupled with your contempt for the medical profession speaks volumes as does your misplaced anger.
Please take a moment to look into your "heart". Try to confound mind and body just for a moment. You may be surprised at what you find.
I apologize both to you and to our fellow RLS sufferers for the tone of my last post.
We all have enough to concern ourselves without this sort of thing.
Your post felt like an attack and I have to admit that my response was very much a knee jerk reaction.
I would like to think I am beyond that sort of thing and it pains me to realize that I am mistaken.
However, I think I made it clear that I am pretty skeptical myself and, to be honest, I felt pretty vulnerable putting the Sarno stuff out for all to see.
This was, for me, an act of trust.
(Incidentally I meant engage not "confound".)
We are all suffering at the hand of RLS and, bearing this in mind, we should probably try to be nice to each other.
That being said, I feel I have failed miserably in this regard and I belatedly send you my very best wishes.
I apologise for what you perceived of as an attack on you. I understand that you felt vulnerable putting this out here. Unfortunately you have completely misunderstood what I tried to say. I have not attacked women nor have I attacked science. I am in fact a woman myself and it is misogyny and mythical thinking within the health profession that I have a problem with. I have tried to explain that I cannot condone the current trend within the NHS that allows GP’s and consultants etc. to have ‘opinions’ on their patients’ mental health and psychiatrists or psychologists to have ‘opinions’ on their patients’ chronic medical health conditions. They are not adequately trained for this sort of cross over (not even adequately trained in their own field I find). I have been told I don’t have a neurological condition by a psychiatrist who also admitted he knows nothing about neurology because he’s in fact a psychiatrist. His obsessive and deeply confused ramblings were intolerable. I’m sick of being shuffled into the ‘it’s all in your head’ bag and I get very jittery when I see anyone pushing a very tenuous ‘mind body connection’. People make assumptions based on very little information… you also made an awful lot of assumptions about me. I’m a psychologist and knowledgeable about consciousness research. I have also spent most of my life trying to find and unravel a trauma that could be the reason for my health conditions, which turned out to be genetic. My past is none of anyone else’s business, not even that of any pretend doctor’s.
I’m very sorry I didn’t explain myself any better but I’m very tired from poor sleep and the side effects from the medication for RLS I finally managed to procure after continuous hopeless trips to health practitioners who just fobbed me off. I have been accused of somatisation, health annxiety and ‘hysteria’. I’m sorry I sounded angry. Believe me I’m in the same position as everyone else, being gaslit and humiliated to death.
Got it! So sorry to have misunderstood so badly. Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough reply. I am much humbled by your words.
I have recently been referred to a Geriatric Psychologist who prescribed anti depressants. "I don't need anti depressants I need to get off Pramipexole " I said, but with little hope of being understood and even less hope of being prescribed anything useful .
I have had RLS for thirty years and I am running out of options. The Pramipexole is augmenting and I have tried everything so I am facing a horrible death or suicide.
My dad was a "shrink" so I know all about pathologising the family! And yes I have done my time in hell with medications, withdrawal, nausea, depression anxiety etc etc so I do understand where you are coming from. I to am sick and tired of being treated with contempt by doctors who know nothing about RLS let alone the mind.
So I am not about to fall for any snake oil mind body crap either. But there is more to this than simplistic theories about the psyche and it's material extensions.
With all due respect to the medical profession, I don't think we know much about the mind and it's potential and I tend to admire those who think outside the proverbial box and try to add something to our understanding of who we are.
Our entire species is about to go down the evolutionary plug hole because we have no idea about how to live in the world. The idea that we are part of the natural world was banished during the so called Enlightenment, (a misnomer if ever there was one) which taught us how to separate mind from body and, as a consequence how to separate ourselves from nature. So here we are with our disembodied minds looking in on a material world in which we have no place . No wonder the planet is being laid to waste! The split between mind and body is as old as Western Civilization and will be our undoing if we persist.
I won't add insult to injury by further explaining my reasons for taking a personal interest in Sarno's work! His followers are more interested in the "trauma" of day to day existence than in childhood trauma and this makes it much more interesting and useful to me.
So I am keeping my options open.
I apologize again for over reacting to your comments. Thank you for taking the time to respond .
I shall be looking out for your posts with renewed interest in future.
Thank you for your kind response. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have responded at all, just scrolled on by, but this matter has been smouldering within for quite some time and I guess sometimes we just have to act out the frustration. I’m sorry it made you feel like I was attacking your experience, I really wasn’t but know it was an inevitable conclusion. The same psychiatrist I saw claimed that the side effects I reported from the drug he tested on me was due to nocebo. I worry lest patients start to support such formulaic and unfair assessments of their minds and agree that symptoms can in fact be induced and also got rid of just as easily! We can all fall for fallacies.
The frustration that I feel is probably more akin to the stress you’re talking about. Stress is real, I’ve suffered from it all my life, but doctors don’t care about the medical science behind stress and think it’s ‘just a bit of anxiety’ and some feminine irrationality, all just ghostly presences ‘in the head’, wherever that is, haha, because it’s clearly not the brain in their opinion - and that it can easily be straightened out with some male directed CBT if the patient is willing to comply (I think of CBT as a masculine invention and a means of mind control - and not in a nice way, apologies to anyone who feels differently).
Trouble is, once stress has done whatever harm it can do to your DNA and neurological make up, you really can’t always do very much to put things back on track. I have no way of knowing what kind of damage it has done to me, I can only suffer the consequences of having chronic health conditions and speculate. I was recently in touch with a pain clinic, and thought the whole interview with the specialist nurse was pretty odd and quite patronising. The oddest part was her telling me she wanted to know everything about my childhood. I ran a mile. I knew the reason is they think there’s a chance they can uncover a trauma and fix your pain. Seriously though, I’m already 57, well educated, and they don’t think I have already done inner work? Has their approach cured anyone in the history of the NHS..? Hm well who knows but I don’t expect so. I have looked but not found ‘a trauma’ that I can blame my pain and fatigue, but rather subscribe to the idea that all of life is traumatic for some of us, especially the ones amongst us who use our brains: it’s the trauma of living and suffering and then, just to close the circle of malaise, of being subjected to negative feedback from people who pretend to understand. I’m sure I must have heard of Sarno before but I just can’t find it in myself to listen to more about ‘mind over matter’. I really do hope he has a point and is able to help you and others. I might just check it out in order to clarify my opinion.
I do like reason, but I don’t subscribe to Cartesian dualism at all, and sadly I think ‘mind over matter’ is just another form of dualism. Magical thinking never got anyone anywhere, thoughts don’t affect the material world. You can calm down the nervous system though, that’s another ‘matter’ altogether. Sometimes through repetition, you can retrain some brain paths, if you’re lucky enough to have a plastic enough brain. I’m sorry I’m really rubbish at explaining my view point today, I’m really struggling, just like you, having to deal with the side effect of Buprenorphine along with some other very debilitating symptoms of disease and not getting any help or support (but rather the opposite, i.e. they are trying to prevent me from accessing proper care or just kill me out of ignorance and poor medical practice). The Buprenorphine actually induces depression in me. Not everything is about low serotonin, haha… clearly high serotonin can be just as nasty. Or at least, the ability to metabolise it. The low serotonin narrative is very dangerous and pervasive, as it clearly doesn’t apply to everyone. The motivation for life is low at this point though quitting is not really my game, either. I know a lot about the mind but the more I know, the less I can explain any of my view points. It’s too complicated. There is the whole realm of the psyche that is not the mind.
Interesting, Chris, thanks for posting. I know about Dr Sarno and his ideas and have one of his books. I support your notion that in many cases his approach may bring relief. I feel it is especially useful for stress related pain/issues, and the thing is that many people will deny or simply be totally ignorant that stress is an issue in their physical problems. I think we all know or at least admit that stress (can) make things worse; it generally does.
Reading the book, but not going through all the exercises, didn't do much for me. That said, I have difficulty identifying my emotions and applying his approach is thus not easily done for me. But you inspired me to have another look and another go. If not for the rls, it may help lift my fatigue.
What I find interesting about this debate is the well-established scientific acceptance of the placebo effect, yet the questioning of other mind-body health relationships. My orthopedic surgeon, after multiple MRIs showed "nothing remarkable", suggested amazon.com/Way-Out-Revoluti...
I found it very interesting, but don't think it says much about my PLMD, which my mother had.
I believe that there is a connection between my RLS and my psyche, and particularly my upbringing. I learned at a very young age to be hyper-vigilant; worried about what my parents thought, what my teachers thought, and so forth. Love seemed conditional on performance, so I learned to be a "good boy", getting good grades, doing piano recitals, and the like. This hyper-vigilance continued for decades, and I was fairly unaware that it was there, as I was so used to operating that way that it just seemed normal. It was only in my later life, and after years of studying psychology, that I began to become aware of it. I'm convinced that decades of that kind of chronic anxiety has a physical impact, and the idea of RLS making me feel like I want to climb out of my own skin seems to match my psychological experience.
I'm actively working on a variety of modalities to see if I can calm my nervous system, and I am hoping that my RLS will abate. I see some signs that this is working, and I am cautiously optimistic. I read Sarno's work years ago, and I think he's very much on the right track. To me, it's certainly worth exploring as I really have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain.
Thank you Dougg for your Candid and open hearted reply to my post. I think your account of your upbringing and subsequent adult experience will resonate with many people on this site and I thank you for sharing with us. This takes courage.
These words, in particular, struck me as having total significance:
" the idea of RLS making me feel like I want to climb out of my own skin seems to match my psychological experience. "
That is one heck of an insight Dogg and I truly hope that you will find a way to incorporate it into an ongoing strategy. This, I think ,is the difficult bit, but, as you point out, we are not deplete with alternatives so why not give it a try?
It may be my imagination (!) but since I began trying to develop a practice around my own particular demons I have been beset by new and hitherto unfamiliar physical symptoms. E.G: My chronic hip pain for over a year vanished but then migrated to my right side shoulder. I have no appetite at all one day and am ravenous the next. And, on the odd occasion I get some sleep ,I have vivid dreams which turn out to be distorted representations of my current problems and fears. It's all a bit disturbing actually but this is exactly what Sarno and his followers predict so I am going to persist and try, at the same time, to keep an open mind.
I hope you will also persist and that you will find a way out of the steel trap and get some relief in your life.
Dougg and Welschrispy, interested by your discussion and wondering how your mindbody journey, related to RLS, is going now nearly a year after this post.
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