You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

I want to talk about rice.

Not the grain.

The acronym we're given to help us remember what to do after an injury.

R. Rest. I. Ice.

C. Compression. And E. Elevation.

The idea is that you want to let your body recover while

minimizing inflammation. Turns out, pain doctors have a new acronym now, featuring very different

advice. They would say meat. That's M, movement, E, exercise, A, analgesia, and T, treatment, like physical therapy and massage.

That, by the way, was Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Maybe you've heard of him?

He's a neurosurgeon and a medical reporter for CNN.

He says the thinking has changed on this because we've learned that actually inflammation

after an injury can be a good thing.

It's really interesting, you know, to tell people who are injured to get up and walk on it or do

whatever because that's not what they're used to hearing. But it's almost like if you allow

the body to do its job, if you allow those inflammatory molecules to rush to the scene

and do their job, they do a pretty good

job. And you're less likely to have chronic pain if you do that early mobilization and don't

focus as much on decreasing inflammation. Sanjay has been reporting on pain science for a while now.

And he wrote a book called It Doesn't Have to Hurt, Your Smart Guide to a Pain Free Life.

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