Dr. Sanjay Gupta

If you are on an Indonesian beach, your stress levels are probably dropping.

You're probably releasing more of the feel-good hormones.

You're activating something in your body known as your endogenous opioid system.

What is that?

It is our body making opioids.

You know, the opioid pills that you take, like many things in medicine, got their inspiration from the human body.

So many of the things that we do in medicine take our inspiration from the human body.

But let me tell you the big difference between the opioids you make versus the opioids you take.

Opioids you take, like pills and stuff like that, they may decrease pain, but they may also enhance memory.

So they actually, in some ways, are forcing you to remember that experience or remember that pain, sort of creating that memory loop around pain.

And they also decrease mood.

If you've ever spoken to an opioid addict, they're at some point not taking opioids to get high.

They're taking it to not feel terrible, to feel some sense of normalcy again.

Right.

So point being that opioids decrease mood, they increase memory in a bad way, meaning making you remember the painful experience even as they decrease pain.

But your own natural opioids also decrease pain, they decrease or inhibit memory of the painful experience, and they improve mood.

It's remarkable to me.

So you ask, what is the mechanism of something like virtual reality goggles, or frankly, a lot of these modalities?

In some ways, they're letting the body do its job, and they're helping it along the way.

It's your own endogenous opioid system that we're just trying to give it a little push, a little nudge, sort of make it work.