BOSTON -- Eight out of 10 Americans seek medical treatment for back pain at some time in their lives.

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NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner reported Sunday that one New York City doctor has built his career upon the theory that the cure for back pain is in our brains.

"If you have pain every day all day, you don't know if you want to wake up the next day," said Peg Hanson, a wife and mother of two who suffered with chronic, excruciating back pain for years.

"I couldn't do things with my children that I wanted to," Hanson said.

Allan Masison, 78, of Weymouth, had spinal stenosis and sciatica so severely he needed to use a cane.

"It was just absolutely unbearable," Masison said.

Masison and Hanson have both lived free of back-pain for eight years, thanks to Dr. John Sarno.

"He saved my life," Hanson said.

"Think about your pain as your friend," said Sarno. "Your brain does it to your body, believe it or not, to protect you."

Sarno is an attending physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center. His theory was borne out of frustration with traditional treatments, "because people just didn't get better."

And that's when Sarno realized every patient in pain had the same traits, "Hard-working, conscientious, responsible. We call that the perfect tendency. So why is this a problem? In the unconscious it's a problem because it puts certain elements within us under pressure," said Sarno.

That is the essence of Sarno's theory; that our emotional stress, tension and anger restrict blood flow to certain body parts, causing physical pain.

"This was caused by emotion. This was caused by stress," said Masison.

Masison was on the verge of back surgery eight years ago when he read Sarno's book. Within days his condition improved. He said he was cured in two months, despite his surgeon's disbelief. "He said, 'This is impossible!'"

His surgeon said, "Let me see you bend over and touch your toes." When Masison did, his surgeon said "Agh!" and walked out of the exam room.

"He answered questions in this book that I had had for years," Hanson said. " I started to think differently about my pain. When I had pain I would think, 'OK, what's going on in my life?'"

Dr. Michael Groff is chief of the Neurosurgical Spine Service and co-director of the Spine Care Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He said Sarno's controversial theory to alleviate pain won't help everyone, but it does makes sense.

"All pain has a mental component as well as a physical component," Groff said. "Just helping patients understand that the pain they're suffering from is not causing them damage is often very, very liberating."

Liberating indeed for Hanson. Eight years ago she could hardly lift her children, yet last summer she rode her bicycle 110 miles in a single day.

"This information will help me for the rest of my life," she said.

Sarno said significant work, family or marital stress can trigger pain, but so, too, can milestone birthdays, like turning 40 or 50. His treatment isn't just for back pain. It may hold true for everything from headaches to stomach troubles.