Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Hmm.

It's like this memory loop just keeps getting played over and over in their brains.

And I think we've learned a lot over the last decade about how to prevent that from happening.

So not letting acute pain, which most people are going to experience, turn into chronic pain.

If I had to add a more to the title of the book, you always want longer titles, I would say it doesn't have to hurt as much or as long.

You don't touch hot pan, hot, move your hand away, stubbed toe.

Chronic pain is when it just lasts.

So there's no ongoing insult or injury to your body, and yet the pain persists.

People, they try and put a timeframe on it.

So they say if you have pain like that every day for three months, at that point, it's considered chronic pain.

If you have it sort of every other day for six months, you know, you sort of get the idea, but it's pain that just simply won't go away.

I think if you go literally from head to toe, I think headaches such as migraine headaches, that'd be considered a type of chronic pain.

That's a big percentage.

Going into the face, there are people who have facial pain like trigeminal neuralgia and TMJ.

Most joints can be a source of chronic pain going from your shoulders, your elbows, your hips, your knees, down to your ankles.

And then there's the back and the neck, which I think are big sources of chronic pain.

So it's typically areas of the body which are moving a lot, but now you're not moving because you're in pain or things like headaches.

No, you know, I got to tell you, Mel, it was so interesting because I first talked to my publisher about this and I thought,

how big a problem is this really?

I'm a neurosurgeon, so I'm seeing pain all the time.