{"id":762,"date":"2014-06-18T18:04:45","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T23:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/?p=762"},"modified":"2017-03-26T19:59:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T00:59:25","slug":"how-painkillers-take-the-edge-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/?p=762","title":{"rendered":"How Painkillers Take the Edge Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 294px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/health.howstuffworks.com\/medicine\/medication\/how-do-painkillers-know-where-you-hurt.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/7\/78\/Wolcott%27s_instant_pain_annihilator%2C_advertising_poster%2C_1863.jpg\/294px-Wolcott%27s_instant_pain_annihilator%2C_advertising_poster%2C_1863.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"294\" height=\"479\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">If only it were that simple.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Pain is essential to life, and not just in a Nietzschean, what-does-not-destroy-me-makes-me-stronger sense. It alerts us to injuries and prods us to stop poking at our wounds. It\u2019s God\u2019s megaphone, nature\u2019s cone of shame. Pain is so essential, in fact, that losing our capacity for it can have life-threatening consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Yet we\u2019ve really only begun to understand how pain works in the past 40 years or so, thanks in large part to technological advances. Granted, most painkillers sport a list of side effects that reads like a Tom\u00e1s de Torquemada\u2019s own torture manual, but at least we understand something of the nervous mechanisms that underpin our owies. That said, just what on Earth is a COX inhibitor? Or an NSAID? And most important of all\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/health.howstuffworks.com\/medicine\/medication\/how-do-painkillers-know-where-you-hurt.htm \" target=\"_blank\">How do painkillers know where you hurt?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pain is essential to life, and not just in a Nietzschean, what-does-not-destroy-me-makes-me-stronger sense. It alerts us to injuries and prods us to stop poking at our wounds. It\u2019s God\u2019s megaphone, nature\u2019s cone of shame. Pain is so essential, in fact, that losing our capacity for it can have life-threatening consequences. Yet we\u2019ve really only begun &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/?p=762\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How Painkillers Take the Edge Off<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,12,54,82,4,121,67,475,415,3],"tags":[824,828,827,832,830,829,826,825,68,831],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biochemistry","category-consumer","category-electromagnetism","category-health","category-history","category-imaging","category-medicine","category-neuroscience-science","category-psychology","category-science","tag-analgesic","tag-anesthetic","tag-cox","tag-cox-2","tag-nociceptor","tag-nsaid","tag-opiate","tag-opioid","tag-pathology","tag-prostaglandin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholasgerbis.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}