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Help me ideate on a business to help people with TMS!

JanAtheCPA said:
how do we go about completely changing web search results?
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I had a powerful spiritual experience in my early 20's. I couldn't believe how OBVIOUS it was that God was there, loved us, always has and always will and there was nothing we could do to lose that love.

Churches on every corner. Synagogues. The 'spiritual center' I passed in Malibu.... The Hindu Temple up the street from it. How did I miss it?

Oh. I never LOOKED until I was desperate for Him. I needed him badly and none of my efforts were working. So I gave up. And then God came. No Church or religion necessary!

And that was EXACTLY how my experience with TMS was. I was literally told about Sarno by my neighbor, right after my very first Doctor visit about my Back, but I had to exhaust all of my own attempts and 'fixes' before I would listen
Sarno said the same thing in "Rejecting the diagnosis" in Healing Back pain!!

Maybe not everybody is as hardheaded and ego filled as I was, but most of my friends I approached who were already "In the system" have shooed me away. My sister is on like her 4th or 5th back surgery? My Friends with expensive health insurance believe in the system..until it kicks them out.

My friend who committed suicide over his pain issues last year was despondent over losing his healthcare policy. He always scoffed when I told him about Sarno. I remember thinking to myself that he might be more receptive when they wouldn't give him any more operations, but I never got a chance to speak with him again.

Just as Jesus preached to the desperate downtrodden and the poor, the only place I can think of that Sarno's idea's might have a better chance is the Chronic pain care centers...You know, the DUMPSTER of the pain industry?

My most receptive (and now pain free) friends and acquaintances have all been too poor to get into the system in the first place...mostly through a lack of insurance.
nora97 said:
In other words, what would have helped you in your journey of TMS recovery?
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More pain, and less insurance. I don't want to be cynical BUT I can't see any facet of the for-profit medical world supporting Sarno's idea's. ....they made about $100k off of my insurance in a year and a half. Then I spent 11 bucks and they never saw me again (except once when I went to show off and preach Sarno)

Science has become a religion of sorts, and just like all those religions kept me from God, my rigorous scientific evaluation kept me from Sarno, the truth and being healed.
 
It's true what Baseball65 said. Same here, I had to get desperate, I mean really really desperate to cry for God, to God, to shout at God...if there was a God somewhere ... he had to help me because I could not help myself. And no one could.

I cried on my knees, literally. And I was helped. No religion needed. Just letting go, deep surrender. Humble. And after some time I realized that I could surrender even more. And then, even more...I suppose I'll do it, I'll continue to surrender to God even more until I'm out of here, dead. Not in the body anymore.
 
I have very little tech knowledge, as @JanAtheCPA knows well :) However, I just asked the free version of an AI program (Gemini) how I would know if I have TMS and what I should do to treat it. I was surprised at how good and comprehensive the answer was. However, when I asked what I should do if I have Fibromyalgia and Chronic Migraine (my original primary TMS symptoms), I was given the usual BS medical response. This makes me wonder if there is a way to better train AI to include a TMS strategy when people ask about chronic physical symptoms, since I think people are increasingly using these LLM AI tools to search for answers.
 
Ellen said:
I have very little tech knowledge, as @JanAtheCPA knows well :) However, I just asked the free version of an AI program
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That's way more than I've been willing to do, @Ellen! I'm impressed.

And what a perfect depiction of the essential dichotomy we are up against. I think I'll have to alert Forest to this, as he's the techie over at the PPDA (or ATNS in their rebrand, I guess).
 
JanAtheCPA said:
That's way more than I've been willing to do, @Ellen! I'm impressed.

And what a perfect depiction of the essential dichotomy we are up against. I think I'll have to alert Forest to this, as he's the techie over at the PPDA (or ATNS in their rebrand, I guess).
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I suppose it all relates to what @Bonnard wrote about Search Engine Optimization. I think we can teach computers to do better before the medical industrial complex.
 
JanAtheCPA said:
Holy crap, @Bonnard. I had no idea it was that bad.

Sigh.
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I was thinking about one follow-up part to this.
That was when I searched "how to deal with back pain" and did not add any terms connected to TMS or mindbody.
There's a ton out there if you add a search term that's relevant.
SO, I think the folks affected are primarily true newcomers--folks who have not heard of TMS or Sarno or mindbody at all. If folks have some sense, they're likely to search Google differently.
 
Hi everyone - it's been a few months now, and I'm glad to report I am indeed working on something to help more people globally with neuroplastic chronic symptoms. I'm at idea-stage now, working with a co-founder, and we're building an AI-driven neuroplastic recovery program leveraging all the great work from the medical community and peer-support. The purpose is to essentially hyper-personalize a recovery program to help people unlearn neuroplastic symptoms.

I'm hoping to speak to as many people as possible with a neuroplastic symptom (or TMS, or MBS) either now or in the past to help pressure test the idea. This could be a phone call or Zoom call and can be flexible on date/time. I want to understand what features would be most helpful for people!

Really appreciate any insight :) If you can please message me directly (or even like this post) I will reach out to you!

Feel free to also email me at norarabah07@gmail.com

I hope together, we can help build something to help more people recover.
Nora
 
I've tried without success to convince many people that TMS is incredibly real, and I've even explained my own situation (which must have without question been a mind body issue). For me it has to come down to education and that education must be adopted by the medical community because one single wrong word from a doctor can condemn someone to a life of pain.

My friend hurt his back getting out of a car 40 years ago and to this day refuses to accept the concept of TMS despite knowing that I cured myself of 40 years of debilitating headaches through TMS approaches.

Your business idea, in my view, must focus on the science and be incredibly persuasive.
 
"I've considered education the medical community, given most of us went to doctors during our TMS journey(s) and many failed to point us to the right resources."

Isn't TMS = Central Sensitisation? Aren't medical practitioners in Pain Management educated in that? The way I found out about TMS was via the private health services in the UK (not national health services). I was told I probably have nervous system dysregulation and that was brought about by trauma. I was directed to books like When The Body Says No, The body Keeps the Score etc this lead me on to the Curable app. When I did some searches online about trauma and dysregulation I found out about TMS. Some doctors in the Pain Management field are aware of TMS but they do not refer to it as TMS, they know that the mind plays a huge part in pain and other related symptoms. If the authors of these two popular and successful books made a reference to TMS (do they?) and this website it may give more weight to the tools available for healing. To be honest I think your business proposition is already covered by Curable unless you are thinking of developing a similar solution to Curable? I think TMS isn't a term that's easily marketable to get buy-in from the public. If I heard of TMS I'd probably to turned-off but Curable was my main entry into TMS. The way they market the mind-body is solution is great. I think the question is what value can you offer over and above Curable?
 
nora97 said:
Should I be targeting consumers/people directly, or the medical community?
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Here’s the thing. As far as consumers—-we have them here on the forum. And even though they show up believing they may have TMS, most, in the end won’t believe it. Or, won’t do the advisable course of action. So they leave. TMS is a HARD sell, even to warm leads. As far as the medical community—Big Pharma is involved in sponsoring medical education and research. They do NOT want to see people get better. They want to medicate fibromyalgia into the sunset. You can make a list a mile long for the meds treating what we know to be TMS, and people will gladly pay and take these meds for life. So honestly, I think it will be harder to educate the medical world. They have to want to be educated. And they would have to go against what they were taught. Right now, there are some brave pioneers. Sarno was the first. But you can see where that got him among his peers.
 
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“Isn't TMS = Central Sensitisation?”
In purely physical, medical terms that is what some people call it but TMS as defined by Sarno is quite different.
 
Medical community may not want to be sold mindbody education. Why cutting their own revenue stream? Selling to corporations as employee welness bundles may be more fesible because there is potential to reduce their medical insurance payments.
 
mikeinlondon said:
"I've considered education the medical community, given most of us went to doctors during our TMS journey(s) and many failed to point us to the right resources."

Isn't TMS = Central Sensitisation? Aren't medical practitioners in Pain Management educated in that? The way I found out about TMS was via the private health services in the UK (not national health services). I was told I probably have nervous system dysregulation and that was brought about by trauma. I was directed to books like When The Body Says No, The body Keeps the Score etc this lead me on to the Curable app. When I did some searches online about trauma and dysregulation I found out about TMS. Some doctors in the Pain Management field are aware of TMS but they do not refer to it as TMS, they know that the mind plays a huge part in pain and other related symptoms. If the authors of these two popular and successful books made a reference to TMS (do they?) and this website it may give more weight to the tools available for healing. To be honest I think your business proposition is already covered by Curable unless you are thinking of developing a similar solution to Curable? I think TMS isn't a term that's easily marketable to get buy-in from the public. If I heard of TMS I'd probably to turned-off but Curable was my main entry into TMS. The way they market the mind-body is solution is great. I think the question is what value can you offer over and above Curable?
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definitely good question - we wouldn’t want to duplicate efforts at all and are developing something a little different than Curable. The intention would be to do exactly as you said above - try to market TMS in a way that the masses might understand. Maybe that means more emphasis on AI and data to appeal to those who are skeptical of “emotional work”. I’ve been talking to Dr. Dave Clarke at the ATNS as well to see if educating physicians could also be a pathway.
 
Hi @nora97!

I don't know what it's like in the States, but over here in the UK the only 'medic professionals' that I've come across that very often embrace mind/body work are chiropractors (but, of course, they still want to combine it with giving chiropractic treatment otherwise they lose their livelihood).

Way back in 1982 I had a chiropractor tell me that my back pain was 'psychogenic' (at which time I wasn't open to the 'diagnosis' because I thought he was telling me that my pain was all in my head and it wasn't real, which made me so angry that I wanted to knock his block off! :eek:). He was South African and had done his training in South Africa and had been working in London, England, for around a decade.

Although much smaller in number, a branch of chiropractic that particularly embraces it is McTimoney Chiropractic (not sure if they are in the US at all). It's a gentler form of chiropractic and they include pain education and mind/body work in their care plans for patients. Here's an example https://www.evolvelife.co.uk/.

I just did a search and it seems that chiropractors in the US are more than open to it too, if this chiropractor's website is anything to go by https://www.thebodyfixchiro.com/healing-back-pain/ (The Mind-Body Connection in Healing Back Pain - The BodyFix - Mt. Pleasant Sports Medicine Chiropractic & Spine Wellness Clinic).

I wish you the best of luck with your endeavours.
 
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nora97 said:
Thanks everyone for your responses! While we are still building something, we created a waitlist if you'd like to sign up to get notified whenever we have a prototype :) Sign up below!

https://www.trynervana.com/ (Nervana)
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Hi Nora

This isn't something for you to consider now but I supervise clinical psychology students as part of my role. We're often looking for research projects they can get involved in.

If you get this off the ground and would value some research/evaluation activity then do get in touch.

Good luck!
 
Hi everyone - just wanted to continue this thread and. update you on progress with my idea on how to help more people who don't already know about the mind-body connection, or who won't believe it. My co-founder Miles (who has also struggled with chronic pain for more than half his life) and I have been working on a product that we hope will help. Basically, it takes all this great knowledge on TMS/MBS in collaboration with the ATNS (Dr. Clarke has agreed to be a content-reviewer / advisor) and packages it in a way that we believe skeptical people might resonate with. I'm excited to say that we are now testing the app with 20 people next week to get some feedback! We do have a big challenge ahead: we will need to test this with more people, but it's quite hard to recruit people without marketing dollars (we're bootstrapping this for now, no funding yet...) If anyone has advice on where we could find additional people to test the app, please let me know! We want people to tell us which features are working or not working, or which features they would like to see. And if you want to test yourself or want to share with others, the "Waitlist" is here.

I'm not sure if people listened to this podcast called "Invest Like the Best", but recently the CEO of Oscar Health, Mark Bertolini, a very successful person in the corporate world, talked all about his experience with neuroplastic pain. He had such bad pain after a skiing accident that he even scheduled his own suicide :( A doctor at that center suggested he didn't have structural pain, but neuroplastic pain. And he quickly healed - a crazy story! So, I'm thinking that perhaps the angle of "neuroplastic symptoms" and doubling-down on the scientific component of mind-body syndrome will help the average person in the US start to comprehend it and believe it. Others in this thread have suggested this - so that's where we are leaning. We are trying to package all of the great content on mind-body syndrome into an app that talks about "re-wiring your neural circuits" or "retraining your brain". We're also using AI to help personalize the program, so people feel like they are getting a customized solution for them, even if the foundation is the same across symptoms.

Thank you for those that help me brainstorm! Really trying to help others reach the pivotal "ah-hah" moment I had a few years ago :) And funnily enough, while I've been working on this app that is constantly trying to communicate the shift from physical to emotional, all of my symptoms are at bay myself! No current bloating, pain or sleep issues!
 
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