his opinion that the tms treatment "cured" his back pain, although he admitted that he continues to have relapses of pain. television writer and producer janette barber said that for three years, she had been increasingly unable to walk, and eventually began to use a wheelchair, due to severe ankle pain originally diagnosed as tendinitis. she was later diagnosed and treated for tms. according to barber, she was "pain-free one week after lecture" and able to walk and run within a few months, notwithstanding her "occasional" relapses of pain. the late actress anne bancroft said that she saw several doctors for back pain, but only sarno's tms treatment helped her. the acclaimed filmmaker terry zwigoff said he was on the verge of suicide due to his debilitating back pain, until he turned in desperation to sarno's method and it "saved life", as well as the life of a woman he told about it more recently. controversy the tms diagnosis and treatment protocol are not accepted by the mainstream medical community. sarno himself stated in a 2004 interview with medscape orthopaedics & sports medicine that "99.999% of the medical profession does not accept this diagnosis." although the vast majority of medical doctors do not accept tms, there are doctors who do. andrew weil, an alternative medicine proponent, endorses tms treatment for back pain. mehmet oz, a television personality and professor of surgery at columbia university, includes tms treatment in his four recommendations for treating back pain. richard e. sall, a medical doctor who authored a book on worker's compensation, includes tms in a list of conditions he considers possible causes of back pain resulting in missed work days that increase the costs of worker's compensation programs. patients typically see their doctor when the pain is at its worst and pain chart scores statistically improve over time even if left untreated; most people recover from an episode of back pain within weeks without any medical intervention at all. the tms theory has also been criticized as too simplistic to account for the complexity of pain syndromes. james rainville, a medical doctor at new england baptist hospital, said that while tms treatment works for some patients, sarno mistakenly uses the tms diagnosis for other patients who have real physical problems. sarno's response was that he had success with many patients who have exhausted every other means of treatment, which he said is proof that regression to the mean is not the cause. tms was covered favorably in a recent book on back pain crooked: outwitting the back pain industry and getting on the road to recovery by cathryn jakobson ramin with her remarking that : "every time i told anyone i was writing about back pain, i learned to expect questions about whether i knew sarno’s work. almost everyone had run into someone who had been cured by sarno, often after years of discomfort. i was happy to be able to inform his many admirers that, yes, i had actually spoken with the rock star of the back world." notes and references schechter d, smith ap, beck j, roach j, karim r, azen s (2007). 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