Dr. Sanjay Gupta

You know...

At one point, we are, what, not even 5% of the world's population, and we were taking 90% of the world's pain meds.

We are not even 5% of the world's population, and we were taking 90% of the world's pain medications.

It tells me we don't like pain.

We have deep disdain for pain in this country.

And look, I don't like pain either.

But the idea that you can overly medicalize something, that you can overly proceduralize something.

We did 1.2 million spinal operations last year, okay?

To give you context, in the UK, they did about 50,000.

Now they're a quarter of our population, but still you do the math.

If they were doing our rate, it would still be one sixth of what we do here in this country.

So we don't like pain and we'll do anything to rid ourselves of pain.

But most of the things that we do, do not necessarily treat the root cause.

There's even cultural things when it comes to pain.

I mean,

This book that I wrote is not about the opioid epidemic, although you can't talk about pain in this country without talking about it.

Like, how did that happen?

How did we get to the point where 80 to 90 percent of opioids were being used in the United States alone?

Worldwide, you know, consumption.

To be honest, I think part of that was because pain sort of became considered what they call the fifth vital sign.