Dr. Sanjay Gupta

So if you're optimized in your life, and some of it is very tangible stuff, if you decrease inflammation in your body overall, then an injury is less likely to hurt as much.

because you're not sort of harnessing as much inflammation, over-inflammation to it.

If you're physically active, if you're doing all the things to keep your body and your muscles and your tendons strong, you're not likely to hurt as much.

We kind of get that.

But the idea that if you don't have depression...

something wouldn't hurt as much.

This is more of a revelation.

Wow.

One of the doctors I interviewed for the book said this quote to me, which really stuck with me.

And the quote was, chronic pain hardly ever occurs in isolation.

It always comes with baggage attached.

Now, baggage, I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but baggage could be all kinds of things.

It could, again, be depression, anxiety, poor sleep.

You have to address the baggage as much as you address the pain.

And if you look at good pain doctors, I visit a lot of pain clinics.

I mean, they have psychologists on staff.

And many times it's the psychologist that is the first person to see that patient.

Why?

Because that baggage is the one thing that probably no one else has addressed because they get pain medications.

They may get procedures.