Dr. Sanjay Gupta

This is an acronym, and it's to be sort of a countermeasure to the RICE protocol, if you sprain your ankle, for example.

So RICE is Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

First of all, mobilizing...

which is the M in meat, then exercising, continuing to actually be actively moving, analgesia or pain medication if you need it, and treatment.

such as physical therapy, things like that, tend to be much better in terms of preventing chronic pain.

So might it hurt more in the moment to not ice it, compress it, elevate it?

Yeah, it might.

But what you're trading off is a decreased likelihood of developing chronic pain.

When I was working on the book, I really wanted to try and answer a question, which was, who is more likely to develop chronic pain?

So, you know, it seemed like a fair question.

Not everyone develops chronic pain, despite the numbers as high as they are.

Most people don't develop chronic pain, but who is?

And I started talking to these researchers, and they were asking the same question.

And one of the things they found was

was that at the time of your injury, whatever it might be, the people who had the lowest levels of inflammation were the most likely to have chronic pain.

I think what the researchers sort of realized is that when you are sending all those healing molecules to your site of injury, letting the body do its job, it's actually pretty good at doing that.

All that swelling and that inflammation, again, if it's broken, go get it treated and get it fixed.

I'm talking more like a sprained ankle or something like that.

Something that's non-surgical.

If you allow the body to do its job, then it's more likely to sort of do the job in the moment and not sort of layer out your pain over weeks and months.