The Mindbody Prescription

by John E. Sarno, M.D.
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As someone who's been suffering with chronic pain issues for years now, I'm always on the lookout for anything I can do to help myself feel less pain. Underneath all the quackery contained in this book there seems to be a grain of truth (for me, at least). It helped helped me reduce my chronic pain symptoms considerably in just a short amount of time. If you (or someone you know) suffers from chronic pain, I would highly recommend this book.


The crux of the book is that for some people chronic pain is a Pavlovian response programmed into you shortly after suffering an injury, causing you pain ever after despite the inciting injury having been healed a long time ago.

When you’re desperate, you’ll try anything. And, I didn’t see much harm in applying the simple techniques presented in the book, and I’m glad I did because it seems like it’s working.

But, you should always be skeptical of someone presenting you with a cure-all.

“Just do X and all of your problems will go away!”

No matter how desperate you are, you have to realize that this is unlikely to be true.

Dr. Sarno presents his solution as being the solution for many more problems than seems reasonable given the data available to him (his own experience in his clinical practice).

But, reading a book and thinking about it a little is a small price to pay for the possibility of finding a way of improving my life substantially by reducing (or eliminating if we’re lucky) my chronic pain.

So why not?

His ideas line up with what I’ve learned on my own having to deal with chronic pain for years and it’s working so far.

So at the end of the day, if it works and it’s not harmful then is it really quackery?