17: The Smartest Doctor in the Room with Dean Mitchell, MD - Episode 1717: The Smartest Doctor in the Room with Dean Mitchell, MD - Episode 17
UK Health Radio Podcast
Dr. Dean Mitchell and Dr. David Schechter talk through chronic pain that doesn’t match scan results, Dr. John Sarno’s legacy and the idea of neuroplastic symptoms. They connect personality traits, stress and education-based approaches to new ways of understanding long-term pain.
46:54•6 Oct 2026
Mind, Body and Back Pain: Dr Dean Mitchell Meets Dr David Schechter
Episode Overview
- Chronic pain can be genuine and physical even when scans show no structural damage, pointing toward neuroplastic and emotional factors.
- Personality traits such as perfectionism, self-criticism and people-pleasing (the “type T personality”) may increase the risk of long-term pain.
- Education through books, seminars, journalling and self-reflection is presented as a key part of recovery rather than an optional extra.
- Exploring life stress, past experiences and current pressures is framed as legitimate medical work, not just “psychological” add-ons.
- Words from doctors matter: strong negative predictions about a patient’s future can act as a nocebo and worsen symptoms.
“This is real physical pain that you’re experiencing, but it is not due to a structural or biochemical problem.”
Curious about how others manage chronic pain when nothing on the scan explains it? This conversation between Dr. Dean Mitchell and Dr. David Schechter digs into exactly that puzzle, with a style that feels more like two colleagues swapping stories than a stiff medical lecture. You’ll hear Dr. Mitchell share his own history of crippling back pain as a young doctor during the AIDS crisis, hauling cushions everywhere and feeling like, as he puts it, “a back invalid”.
His turning point came when he reluctantly reread Dr. John Sarno’s book *Healing Back Pain*, went to Sarno’s seminar, and found his symptoms easing simply through education and a new way of thinking about pain. Dr. Schechter picks up that thread, explaining how he went from a sceptical NYU medical student with mysterious knee pain to working directly with Sarno and helping write his first book.
He summarises the core idea bluntly: “This is real physical pain that you’re experiencing, but it is not due to a structural or biochemical problem.” Instead, he describes how modern brain imaging shows that long-term pain is tightly linked to emotional centres of the brain, so education, journalling and psychological work become central tools.
The episode also spends time on personality traits that often show up in chronic pain: perfectionism, being “highly responsible for others”, people-pleasing and being “very hard on yourself”. Dr. Schechter calls this the “type T personality” and points out that the same traits that drive success can quietly fuel ongoing symptoms. Group support, honest conversations about childhood and stress, and the danger of “nocebo” messages from doctors all get a careful airing.
If you’re sober, in recovery, or simply fed up with being told “your scan looks fine”, you may recognise yourself in these stories and pick up some ideas to discuss with your own healthcare team. Could changing how you think about pain be one piece of your healing puzzle?
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