He’s written three books about it, including The Mindbody Prescription. A professor of clinical rehabilitation medicine at the New York University School of Medicine in New York City, Dr. Sarno believes that to protect you from acting on—or being destroyed by—that rage, your unconscious mind distracts you from the anger by creating a socially acceptable malaise: lower back pain. Noted integrative medicine specialist and Prevention advisor Andrew Weil, MD, is a big fan of Dr. Sarno’s theory. So are actress Anne Bancroft and ABC-TV correspondent John Stossel—three of the thousands who report that Dr. Sarno cured their back pain. What is the cure? In a word, awareness. Accept that your brain is trying to protect you from the rage, and the pain will go away. How’s that for “instant”?  Dr. Sarno has coined the term TMS—“Tension Myositis Syndrome”—to describe this “psychophysiological” condition. The brain, he says, mildly oxygen-deprives our back muscles and certain nerves and tendons to distract us and prevent our repressed anger from lashing out. He readily acknowledges that this diagnosis is controversial. In fact, he tells Prevention, “Most people won’t buy it. But my TMS patients who do accept it cure themselves.” John Stossel was a hard sell. “I tried chiropractic. I tried acupuncture. I tried every back chair and special pillow I could find,” he recalls. His back still hurt so much that he spent entire meetings stretched out on the floor. This went on for 15 years, until a colleague told him about Dr. Sarno.  Stossel, the kind of reporter who would normally try to debunk such a theory, says that “it sounded ridiculous” to him. “But my back really hurt, and my medical insurance paid for 80%. So I went to see him, read one of his books, and—except for some occasional twinges—got better immediately.” But it didn’t last. “Six months later, the pain came back, and Dr. Sarno gave me a kind of ‘I told you so’ look. I hadn’t done one thing he had strongly suggested, which was to attend one of his seminars. So I went, got better again, and I’ve been virtually pain-free for 10 years.”  Are you at risk for rage-induced back pain? Dr. Sarno has found that people with certain personality traits are at higher risk for this back pain disorder, specifically intelligent, talented, compulsive perfectionists and those who tend to put the needs of others first. More from Prevention: 3 Healthy Ways To Express Anger