Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Chronic Pain and His New Book

Originally published in the CNN Health newsletter, ‘The Results Are In’, from WWSG thought leader, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

My mom recently fell. It wasn’t a dramatic fall down the stairs or anything like that; she was pushing a suitcase and fell backward, into a sitting position. But she’s in her 80s, with more osteoporotic bone, so it led to a pretty significant spine fracture.

She developed profound pain that hit her physically, as well as emotionally. At one point, she told me that if the pain continued this way, she thought her “time here was done.” It really saddened me to hear that — but it also reminded me how pain can come to define our lives.

Unlike other lifelong conditions, pain can be overbearing in a unique way. If you have a condition like diabetes, yes, you have it for the rest of your life, but you’re probably not constantly consumed by it. Once you have chronic pain, however, it can become your identity. “How are you doing?” “I’m in pain.” You wake up with pain. You go to bed with pain. You can’t do certain things in your life because of pain. Your personality can change because of it. Pain can come with baggage.

This moment made me want to explore this issue of pain and how we can reduce it in our lives. It’s the premise of my new book, “It Doesn’t Have to Hurt: Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life,” coming in September.

One of the things I’ve taken away as I’ve been working on this book is how to prevent pain. It’s something I think about a lot as I get older. And although the pain that I think of immediately may not be significant, like my mom’s, it’s enough to bother me.

For example, your body may hurt after you work out or have a really hard day. For me, it helps to use a foam roller to loosen the myofascia, the thick fibrous envelope around my muscles and tendons.

As we get older, everything tends to get a little bit tighter. If you have swollen muscles after a long run, they will try to swell against that envelope, and that hurts more. So making sure those muscles are as loose as possible is helpful in preventing injury or pain — or at least easing the intensity of pain.

Oftentimes, alleviating pain is about making sure our bodies are prepared to deal with it in the first place.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta brings unparalleled credibility, experience, and clarity to the stage as one of the world’s most trusted voices in health and medicine. As CNN’s chief medical correspondent and a practicing neurosurgeon, he has reported on every major health crisis of the last two decades—from the frontlines of natural disasters and war zones to the global Covid-19 pandemic. 

Event audiences benefit not only from his deep medical expertise, but also his unique ability to communicate complex topics with clarity, empathy, and relevance. Whether discussing brain health, crisis response, or the intersection of media and medicine, Dr. Gupta delivers insights that are timely, actionable, and deeply resonant for groups of all kinds.