eli5: If all pain medication does the same thing (trick the body into thinking everything is okay and it’s not in pain), then why does some pain require stronger medication like opioids?
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Weaker pain killers like ibuprofen or tylenol are anti-Inflammatory so they can only kill pain caused by inflammation, Which is most pain.
opioids hijack the endogenous opioid system straight up blocking the pain stimulus each opioid binds to the system in different ways making some better and some worse at killing certain types of pain.
They also use nmda antagonists as pain killer to like ketamine. This blocks pain in a completely different way than opioid or NSAIDs.
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