The title of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s new book, It Doesn’t Have to Hurt: Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life (Simon & Schuster, 2025), is another way of stating the Buddhist proverb, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” In language accessible to both lay and professional audiences, Gupta defends his thesis using scientific evidence, personal anecdotes, practical guidelines, his own opinion, as well as the opinions of other experts in the field of pain management.
The multiple roles Gupta plays in his professional life make him well-qualified to tackle the complex and challenging topic of pain, both chronic and acute. He is an associate professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine, chief medical correspondent for CNN, and an author.
The book is divided into two sections, and in each, Gupta blends science and storytelling to help readers understand the complexity and challenges surrounding the experience and treatment of pain.
In Part 1, “The New Science of Pain,” Gupta writes, “I’ll begin by reframing your understanding of pain, so you and your healthcare providers can intervene in the way your brain and body process those signals.” What follows are chapters, variously titled “Pain Comes Home,” “Hot-Wired: What Trips the Switch for Chronic Pain?”and “From Hope to Healing: Argument for Optimism.” At times, this section reads like a neurology text that focuses on the anatomy and physiology of the pain cycle, as in the chapter “Mastermind: The Brain as Pain Maker’s” explanation of “an unconscious process called neuroception—an evolutionary gift of a built-in surveillance system that continuously scans the environment for external or internal or visceral cues of danger or safety.”
At other times, Gupta’s narrative becomes a scientific treatise from leading neuroscientists and researchers, such as Sean Mackey at the Systems Neuroscience and Pain Laboratory at Stanford' University and A. Vania Apkarian, PhD, a professor of physiology, anaesthesiology and physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, whose work is directed at finding safe, effective, and accessible treatments for acute and chronic pain.
Yet another way Gupta unfolds the narrative is through stories. For me, these anecdotes were the best-written and most interesting aspect of the book. His well-crafted and persuasive prose shows the impact of pain on the lives of patients, their families, and themselves. For example, he tells about his own mother’s fractured vertebrae and how a kyphoplasty—a procedure to restore the integrity of her spine—relieved her pain and gave her hope for the future. ”Over the next few days I spent with her, first in the hospital and then at home, I was reminded that everything is connected—her symptoms, her pain, her very self. She was soon like a new woman, with a new lease on life. Even though she had been near suicidal a week earlier, on the day I left her she was whistling in the kitchen as she cooked.”
In Part 2, “Taking Charge for a Pain-Smart Life,” Gupta writes, “I’ll recommend some tips and strategies that may reduce your vulnerability, strengthen your resilience to pain and, when it does occur, work with the fullest range of tools to heal more readily.” What follows is a potpourri of therapeutic and preventive measures, “tools in the toolbox” as he calls them, to help achieve the pain-free life he aspires for his readers. Under the category “Mind Your Brain,” he covers psychological practices that include mindfulness, psychotherapy, hypnosis, and self- hypnosis. “Mind Your Body,” where he champions well known wellness guidelines like “move more, sleep more, eat well,” reads like a self-help book and lacks originality as opposed to the chapter “Brain Surgeon, Pain Surgeon.” Here, he reviews the role of surgical intervention in pain management. Based on his many years in the operating room, I found the information relayed here original, heartfelt and intriguing.
Gupta concludes his comprehensive and well‑researched book by acknowledging the importance for those inflicted to take ownership of their pain, to be aware of their own bodies and to use “inner resources” to prevent or reduce pain. “This,” he writes, “ begins with connections—between doctor and patient, within families, and among communities of caring. But the most important connection is the one within us, between body and brain.”
Tolstoy once wrote that, “If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you’re a human being.” In the pages of It Doesn’t Have to Hurt, Sanjay Gupta demonstrates his own humanity by his ability to validate and feel the pain of others in depth and with understanding and then articulates a strategy for those afflicted to free them from their pain and lessen their suffering. — Daly Walker
DALY WALKER, MD is a retired surgeon. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary publications including The Sewanee Review, The Louisville Review, The Southampton Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, The Saturday Evening Post and The Atlantic Monthly. His work has been shortlisted for Best American Short Stories, a Pushcart Prize, and an O’Henry award. He has published three books, Doctor’s Dilemma, Surgeon Stories, and Little Creek.
He divides his time between Boca Grande, Florida and Quechee, Vermont. He teaches a fiction writer’s workshop at Dartmouth College in Osher@Dartmouth’s summer program.
His short story “Resuscitation” appeared in the Fall 2020 Intima.