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Post by faskew on Nov 14, 2018 10:31:23 GMT -5
This Chemical Is So Hot It Destroys Nerve Endings—in a Good Way www.wired.com/story/resiniferatoxin/Temporarily messes with nerve endings to stop pain. Treatment has to be repeated every so often. Being tested on terminal cancer patients and such, who can be pain-free and drug-free for their last days. Sounds like a lot of possible uses, in the future. Except eating. 8-> Quote from the article: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "In Morocco there grows a cactus-like plant that’s so hot, I have to insist that the next few sentences aren’t hyperbole. On the Scoville Scale of hotness, its active ingredient, resiniferatoxin, clocks in at 16 billion units. That’s 10,000 times hotter than the Carolina reaper, the world’s hottest pepper, and 45,000 times hotter than the hottest of habaneros, and 4.5 million times hotter than a piddling little jalapeno. Euphorbia resinifera, aka the resin spurge, is not to be eaten. Just to be safe, you probably shouldn’t even look at it. "But while that toxicity will lay up any mammal dumb enough to chew on the resin spurge, resiniferatoxin has also emerged as a promising painkiller. Inject RTX, as it’s known, into an aching joint, and it’ll actually destroy the nerve endings that signal pain. Which means medicine could soon get a new tool to help free us from the grasp of opioids."
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Post by raybar on Nov 14, 2018 11:43:19 GMT -5
I could use a couple injections of such a drug - left hand, lower back.
However, at present, the pain tells me when I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. If I had an injection, and lacked that painful reminder, would I begin to further damage the affected joints? Might I actually destroy those joints, and become crippled, because my warning systems have been compromise?
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Post by faskew on Nov 15, 2018 8:37:58 GMT -5
According to the article, the chemical blocks pain but doesn't number the area. Not sure how that works. Certainly, there are things that you need the pain for, to remind you not to further damage body parts. I think that this chemical would work best on things that hurt, but it doesn't matter if you move them. There's an ad for one of the OTC pain pills that show some idiot taking the pill, then doing heavy physical labor, which, of course, is probably why he had the pain in the first place. Tricky line to define.
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