Evolution

Hi all,

I've been into TMS for about 8 months now, and I've made some great progress. After sharing this information with some friends, all were very skeptical (as most would be).

As I was telling a friend about TMS, I said this (and I believe Sarno said this, correct me if I'm wrong):
"Humans have come a long way. Through evolution, there's no way that we can get injured from a simple task like typing."

His response:
"We are not hunters/predators/gatherers anymore, so we don't need those same abilities that our ancestors required in the past. So, we've evolved in a different way. For example, typing is a fairly new to our generations so we haven't fully adapted to that and that's why we can get injured from it."


My friend has a valid point, and I can't find a way to refute it. Can anyone argue it to support TMS?

 

My initial thought: why are we just recently getting injured from typing when 50 years ago we weren't?

 

Yes, there is a simple way to refute this claim: this simply isn't the way evolution works. Evolution takes millions of years to occur. In prehistoric times people survived who had genes that promoted quick healing and resilient tissues. They were selected for because they were more likely to survive rather than people (hypothetically) with weaker tissues that did not heal well after small injuries. Thus we have great capacity for tissue healing and are able to lift heavy objects repetitively without true structural injury the majority of the time.

There were certainly many repetitive tasks that certainly occurred in prehistoric times, from chopping wood to making objects by hand- all probably more strenuous than typing. The muscles, tendons and ligaments in our hands are no different now than they were a thousand years ago. In fact, Sarno even mentions people using typewriters in the 20th century for 8 hours per day and the nonexistence of "RSI" at that time. So if anything, we are adapted to do much more strenuous labor than typing and are not using our full physical capabilities.

Hope that makes sense. We won't need to "adapt" to typing because there is no evolutionary advantage for it anyhow

 

Friends are typically skeptical because they don't have all the facts about TMS. If I had listened to my friends, I'd probably still be in pain. The best way to proceed is not to convince them... convince yourself first, heal your hands, then they will believe. That's basically how it went for me.