Dr. Sanjay Gupta

You should move.

Yeah.

I think that's exactly right.

Evolutionarily, it made sense that if you felt pain, you were going to resist doing things.

You were going to treat it like an alarm.

It makes sense that that is how we humans evolved.

Chronic pain, I don't think, was on the bingo card when we evolved.

You know, the idea that pain would come and stay...

I think that that mystifies people still to this day, certainly mystified people in the beginning.

Like, can you imagine what is happening to me that I continue to hurt despite the fact that nothing is happening in my body?

Why does this thumb still hurt from a hammer blow, you know, several weeks ago, whatever it might be.

But the idea that the body is actually pretty good at doing its job.

What we have said in response to chronic pain is don't let the body do its job, you know, ice it and compress it and elevate and don't move and rest and all those things prevent the body from doing its job.

Once you're convinced, and you should be convinced by a really honest conversation with whomever about your back or knee, whatever it might be, that there's not something that's continuously activating those pain receptors that

Then think about movement.

Think about exercise even.

I think when you look at temporal mandibular joint, so this joint in here.

TMJ, exactly.

Literally.

Yes.