Dr. Sanjay Gupta

It's almost like you're going to hurt a certain amount.

Do you want it to hurt now for a little bit?

Or do you want to have that pain continue for a long time?

I'm greatly simplifying here.

But that's sort of where these researchers landed.

They said...

the least inflammation was the most problematic.

And what do we do when we rest and ice and compress and you elevate?

You're decreasing inflammation.

And we just learned that decreasing inflammation is more likely to result in chronic pain.

So we do things because they feel good in the moment, but not necessarily good for us in the long term.

Yeah, mostly not resting, you know, getting up and walking around, going for walks still, you know, it might hurt again if it's, but for most people, continuing to move it, getting those, if you have to imagine it, imagine those healing molecules getting to that site of injury and sort of doing their job.

The body does a remarkable job of actually treating pain and treating injuries if you let it.

But so much of what we do is sort of interfering with that process.

We're blocking it by decreasing blood flow to the area, decreasing inflammation, all with the hopes that we're going to get rid of the pain and it's going to go away forever.

That's right.

People who are moving into older age, they're just constantly moving, they're far less likely to have chronic pain.

You're going to be the best judge of how to retrain your brain.

And what I mean by that is that just simply paying attention to your pain and maybe even keeping a pain journal for a period of time to sort of... Wouldn't that make it worse?

Every time I talk to my mom, my back hurts a little bit.