Podcast The Best Neuroscientific Explanation of Pain

It's Dr Sanjay Gupta MD, neurosurgeon and CNN's well known and highly regarded medical expert, currently publicizing his new book on pain - he just dropped an interview on one of my favorite in-depth shows, Fresh Air, with Terry Gross. His explanation of how pain is created is brilliant.

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/04/nx-s1-5528993/how-does-pain-work-dr-sanjay-gupta-explains

He also talks about:
how pain relievers work;
about our built-in opioid delivery and shut-off systems;
about the protective benefits of allowing inflammation to do its job during acute incidents;

He mentions Phantom Limb Pain, TNG (trigeminal neuralgia) and CRPS (complex regional pain syndrome), along with anxiety, depression, and adverse childhood experiences. He discusses meditation, distraction, placebos, and the latest biomedical research, and has a good story about how he was too nervous to be able to meditate when he was invited to practice with the Dalai Lama.

Terry Gross is great at asking the questions that the average person with pain wants to know. It's well worth your time (less than 45 minutes if you skip the secondary feature about what sounds like a good show on HBO). Or you can just search "Sanjay Gupta new book" for alternative interviews. I'm going to get on my library's undoubtedly lengthy waitlist for it.

 

I'm reading a sample of the book from my library (intro and first chapter) and I should warn the "Sarno purists" that you will object to the inclusion of biomedical approaches, so you might want to stay away. To me, it's clear that he is including a significant component of pain psychology, as his first case study (a woman with twenty years of debilitating migraines) and second one (his 80-year-old mother's fractured lumbar vertebra after a fall) make clear. He states "... psychological approaches are increasingly being recognized and recommended as a first response rather than a last resort."

Which overall is great news, and gives me hope.