
Podcast: Ep537: Beyond Smiley Faces: A New Way to Diagnose Pain
August 8, 2025
Author(s): CNN
Podcast: Chasing Life
1 / 1Beyond Smiley Faces: A New Way to Diagnose Pain
- 1. Beyond Smiley Faces: A New Way to Diagnose Pain
About
One of the most challenging aspects of treating chronic pain is the fact that there’s no objective way to measure it – no number or test like blood pressure or cholesterol. But soon we might have something more specific than the scale of happy face to sad face. Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks with Dr. Prasad Shirvalkar, a physician and researcher who’s implanting electrodes in patients’ brains to better understand how pain is processed—and how we might one day stop it at the source. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Podcast

CNN
All over the world, there are people who are living extraordinary lives, full of happiness and health – and with hardly any heart disease, cancer or diabetes. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been on a decades-long mission to understand how they do it, and how we can all learn from them. Scientists now believe we can even reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s dementia, and in fact grow sharper and more resilient as we age. Sanjay is a dad – of three teenage daughters, he is a doctor - who operates on the brain, and he is a reporter with more than two decades of experience - who travels the earth to uncover and bring you the secrets of the happiest and healthiest people on the planet – so that you too, can Chase Life.