Natural Pain Management Billings MT
Billings, MT
Billings, MT
Gentle Relief for Serious Pain?
Scientists working to develop an alternative to morphine, a painkiller that’s addictive and comes with serious side effects, may have found their source—right within the human body. It’s long been known that the body produces small proteins, called enkephalins, to fight pain. But it doesn’t produce nearly enough to tackle extreme pain of the type morphine is typically used to treat.
Syn-thetic enkephalins have shown promise, but have consistently been thwarted by the blood-brain barrier, a cerebral membrane that refuses to allow small proteins to enter the parts of the brain that control pain. That’s where the breakthrough comes in: Apparently the blood-brain barrier is a bit of a sugar fiend. And glucose is the toll. In studies of mice, scientists at the University of Arizona and the University of New England found that with a glucose molecule attached, the synthetic painkilling proteins leap the blood-brain barrier and attach themselves to the receptors in the brain that control pain. Even at three times the strength of morphine, the enkephalins produced far fewer side effects and fewer indications of addiction.Much human testing is still needed, but the discovery represents real hope for anyone in serious need of pain relief yet wary of morphine’s darker aspects.
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