Feeling frustrated about the recent NYT article

Article (there may be a paywall, unfortunately): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/magazine/chronic-pain.html (Chronic Pain Is a Hidden Epidemic. It’s Time for a Revolution.)

I read the above article this morning, in which the author and chronic pain sufferer details how chronic pain is neglected in the heatlhcare industry. While I certainly applaud that the author is at least bringing awareness to chronic pain and validating those who have been overlooked, I believe the author completely missed the mark on the solution. She reiterates how pain is not well-understood and that precision medicine, in the form of more drugs & pills, bring hope to the field. She applauds Vertex Therapeutics for a novel approach to pain killers. There is absolutely no mention of mindbody syndrome or Dr. Sarno, or the many, many patients who have cured their chronic pain and other ailments by reprogramming their brain and addressing the root cause of their suffering - their minds (including feelings, stressors, etc).

The author does mention meditation, CBT and other more holistic approaches, but quickly dismisses them, saying they typically don't provide substantial benefit. This angers me. I believe this is such a missed opportunity to bring awareness to a real solution to chronic pain, not just awareness to the problem itself. The author even goes as far to detail very obvious examples of mind body syndrome, stating that one patient's pain completely vanished out of nowhere, or that two people can experience pain very differently for no good reason. To me, this is further evidence for mind body syndrome - unexplained differences in our response to pain or timing of pain validates the fact that we need to look inwards to address the origination of this seemingly unexplainable phenomena. Bold statement: More taxpayer dollars funding pain research to enable more R&D in the wrong areas of pain research will be a futile and costly effort. I work in biotech, and while I certainly believe many companies do truly want to make a difference in people's lives, I cannot deny how the biotech funding model biases companies to focus on profits. Daily medications = profits. There is no real incentive to treat our emotions seriously. How would shareholders get paid if millions of people with chronic pain, IBS, insomnia, acne, etc simply cured themselves from the inside, on their own? How ridiculous is it that this TMS wiki, or one book by Dr. Sarno or Alan Gordon has the potential to heal someone at an infinite return on investment, and yet there are billions of dollars poured into treating the body as entirely separate from the mind?

Clearly, this article has triggered something in me. I've never been more passionate about anything in my life - TMS, mind body syndrome, pain reprogramming - whatever you want to call it - is real. It is not one tool in a toolbox to treat a whole host of conditions, it is the ultimate tool. I want to grab people by the shoulders on the street and shake them until the message finally lands. I feel that we are in this figurative valley of death, where one side is focused on our mind through meditation & stress-relief, but mostly as an aid to be even more productive in our capitalist-centric jobs. The other side is biotech research and drug development for diseases of the body. There is no linking of the two sides, no bridge connecting chronic diseases with our minds. Certainly there has been progress, and I do recognize this TMS wiki and community is awesome. But I want more - I want full-scale reprogramming of the healthcare system. I want doctors to take life stressors seriously, to say no to pain killers, even better ones, without first addressing someone's emotions. I want patients to think mental, rather than physical. I want my first reaction when I am bloating, or in pain, or having a fit of insomnia, or experiencing acne, to seriously look inwards. I know I am preaching to the choir here.

 

Yes - it is frustrating.....
I have been well for 12 years now - after 22 years with fibromyalgia. Yet still most people will not listen - or if they do - decide that it might work for me - but they have a 'real' illness!!
So many more won't even consider anything brings them ill health - it just descends on a cloud or something!!
The disregard people have is illustrative of the deeper division between us and nature (imho) - if we cannot see the or understand the way we ourselves impact our own health by our characters, our experiences and traumas and our psychology - how on earth do we heal the chasm we have built between us and the natural world - of which we are firmly a part.....

Denial is the longest river...... all we can do is keep leading the horses to the water - and hope some of them drink!!

 

There is a lot more going on, on small scale than gets publicized.
My husband works in the industry, in a way. Companies, some Governments etc. want options, but are often currently tied to long term or more inexpensive renewed contracts (there is a lot of behind the scenes and $$$ before contracts are renewed, adding greatly to costs, but are consumer safeguards) with providers who only offer traditional options. Because of funding, it’s hard to introduce something new.. and if there is allowed to be involvement from the insured, they often refuse to change what they are doing.
An example is diabetes and associated disease. It costs a fortune for the newer “weight loss drugs” which have costly side effects if used long term. However they can’t get patients to become involved in diet and excercise programs which are proven to have long term positive, life altering effects and reducing and eliminating these diseases and are a fraction of the cost. It’s frustrating. There are companies offering mind/body coaching and psychotherapy as add ons to large insurance plans but they cost, and the amount of patients willing to invest time in them is minimal.
However, years of my own searching for additions to my own mind/body practice revealed that especially in the middle South, hospitals have a myriad of options including coaching, therapy, meditation, mindfulness and movement all aimed at chronic pain patients. These seem to be independently run, but exist just for local patients.
Slowly it’s happening!

 

IMO it's not purely an issue of profits. Doctors write sick notes for workers who are off the job, evaluate who can go on disability benefits, etc etc. Medicine has as strong aspect of population management and ties with government and insurance companies are unavoidable.
You can't have your dr keeping a file on your emotions, life problems, etc
I think the best thing to do is to try and be an example to others of how to slow down, accept oneself, etc. Which can be lot more gratifying than it sounds.
But yes, for me the reality of the mind body connection, vs widespread ignorance or denial of it, is really unsettling.

100% agree with this and MANY of the "famous mindbody teachers " promote their systems as a way to be 'successful at work' among other kinds of 'success'. They are selling books, after all It's such BS. We have to figure out how to be happy in our own ways.....

 

Nora, I agree with you too, of course you're preaching to the choir. I'd go further than you. I believe "they" are actually trying to give people cancers and other serious diseases at earlier and earlier ages, so that they can be profitably treated. Look at all the ads everywhere. Cancer screening, early detection and diagnosis, biological and "personalized" therapies, etc. Self fulfilling prophecies. You said you work in biotech. So you probably know companies are developing personally manufactured mRNAs for cancer treatment following whole genome sequencing of the tumor(s, multiple, as if sequencing one is not enough). We're not too far away from a million dollar workup followed by a 2 million dollar treatment course per person. They know about TMS too, in technological terms:

https://www.nilotx.com/ (Nilo Therapeutics)

You're not going to be able to change the medical industry or the society. I have of a concept of these things as the "collective unconscious" like Jung talked about. They're juggernauts. Personally, I haven't even been able to help one single person in my own extended family recover from plain old TMS, and I'm a fucking doctor.

The only possible escape I know about is to use the capitalist system for yourself:

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/06/meet-mr-money-mustache/ (Meet Mr. Money Mustache)

And interestingly, these financial bloggers, they're also not interested in TMS and self healing in the least. For the medical part, they're mostly focused on building up hundreds of thousands of dollars in HSAs to pay for the exorbitant expenses of the medical industry. Ironically, no interest in a simple $12 book that can heal most medical problems.

 

I'll join the choir, @nora97. I had a similar experience yesterday when I came across this PBS article.

NOVA! - Teaching the Nervous System to Forget Chronic Pain
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/chronic-pain/ (Teaching the Nervous System to Forget Chronic Pain)

They acknowledge the strong link between mental processes (memories in this case) and chronic pain. But then immediately begin discussing drug development to fix it.

There's a GIGANTIC blind-spot in our current medical model that ignores psychologically based treatments as a potential cure for many things. The vast majority of doctors and researchers just can't make that leap. All of us here know that... and yes, it's very, very frustrating.

Nicole Sachs thinks we will reach a tipping point where the TMS/Mind-body approach is more accepted, than not. I'm not as confident, but I do hope she's right!