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I know Dr Sarno speaks about spinal arthritis and mild/moderate hip arthritis in Healing Back Pain and the Mind Body Prescription. He describes Arthritis as grey hairs of the body and part of the natural ageing process. He states that in his experience spinal arthritis is rarely the cause of pain and that he has seen patients who are due to have a hip replacement, and treated them with TMS principles, with good results.

I notice a fair few posts on these forums stating that Osteoarthritis is a structural problem that does cause pain. How can this be so? Surely if spinal and hip arthritis rarely cause pain, then knee, foot, shoulder etc etc, should also rarely cause pain?

My own experience is with big toe Arthritis, that only seems to hurt when I start accepting my back pain (and my back stops hurting) and there is a symptom shift. I can go months without any toe pain and had totally accepted the TMS diagnosis re my pain. My thinking was " yes, I have big toe arthritis and a bone spur (confirmed by x ray), but the pain comes and goes/alternates with my back pain, so it must be TMS" - So basically, I have a structural abnormality but it doesn't cause me pain.

I recently managed to work more on TMS and got to a point where I had no back pain and no foot pain, until I came across some posts on here talking about how arthritis does cause pain. I started wondering about my feet again, and sure enough the pain has returned.

My own experience points to TMS, but posts on here have made me doubt it and again focus on the structural. I was in a place where I completely stopped worrying about my feet and was able to say "the wear and tear probably will get worse, but arthritis is natural and non painful, so I wont be in any more pain". I stopped wearing my Orthotics and everything, but now im wondering whether I should use them again, in case my pain is structurally based and worse degeneration = worse pain?.

Surely if the TMS theory is that certain forms of Osteoarthritis arent painful, this should apply to Osteoarthritis anywhere in the body and I should be able to relax and apply the TMS principles?

Why would pain come and go if it was the structure that is causing pain? surely I should always be in pain?

Also there have been studies which state that only 20% of poeople with big toe arthritis get a worsening in pain, despite obvious further structural degeneration. How could this be so if the degeneration causes pain? Could this 20% be struggling with tms and be attributing this to further degeneration?

The pain i'm in with my feet isn't that great, and the fear of thinking I need to baby my feet with orthotics, or risk more pain and surgery in the future is causing me the most problems.

I need to get back to my original thinking, but certain posts on here have completely confused me. Does anyone have a view or any advice on this?

thanks