>>2420547Download (((John Sarno)))'s Mindbody Prescription which is a book about TMS. It seems like it's the most common cause of chronic back/neck/shoulder/leg pain in the West. TMS is a psychosomatic pain that your unconscious causes as a distraction mechanism against unacceptable unconscious emotions, primarily rage. The current theory is that your unconscious causes this pain by cutting off blood flow to areas of the body and causing oxygen deprivation. This seems likely because cells in the affected areas of chronic pain patients show signs of oxygen deprivation and TMS has a great chance of being cured by psychological treatments based on this theory. Even if the theory of how and why people get the pain is wrong, it's still likely that most chronic pain in the West is psychosomatic. For example, in Norway in 2008 when there were fewer than 5 million inhabitants, the annual rate of whiplash was 2000 and 10% of these got chronic pain. In Lithuania in 1996, whiplash wasn't a thing, so there were practically no cases of it (
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/07/science/in-one-country-chronic-whiplash-is-uncompensated-and-unknown.html). Another argument is the fact that chronic pain tends to jump around to new places as soon as one place is cured. And the fact that almost all TMS patients feel pain when certain muscles and tendons are pressed, no matter if they have TMS in their neck or in their feet. The illogical nature of a lot of chronic pain also supports this. If you feel like absolute garbage when bending over the sink or in bed, but you're able to jog and move furniture, maybe it's unconscious stress causing the pain instead of physical issues. Here are some studies showing that posture doesn't cause back pain, hamstring tightness doesn't predict back pain, half of pain-free people have MRI abnormalities like herniated discs for which surgery could be recommended:
https://www.bettermovement.org/blog/2010/back-pain-myths-posture-core-strength-bulging-discs