Dr. House is .. a doctor, sedentary, with no sports life or interests, that is why you do not do what a doctor does, you do what they say, because they are supposed to say it based on a diagnosis, not based on hunches or suppositions.
Just presenting increasing pain from having nothing to numb it, even more so since he has some
Seeing him desperate to get these painkillers makes me wonder if he is not addicted to painkillers, addiction to certain medications is not something uncommon
MC is a sports-oriented fellow with a sports background, hanging around sports halls and sports-interested youngsters.
The pain threshold in sportsmen is way bigger than usual office workers, and so are the habits of popping pills even in the off-season or after retirement, outta habit, even though their sports habits might have died out or greatly diminished.
Sportsmen out of shape, because their athlete days are gone, is the norm; few of them keep their eating and health habits alive after retirement. So if they still eat like Obelix while training like Asterix, they will keep popping pills as a habit.