For example beta-endorphin which is produced by our bodies during pain, stress, exercise, pleasure, is 18 to 33 stronger than morphine according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-Endorphin under “Pain Management” so why would we even need pain killers?
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Your body produces just the minimal amount of beta endorphin as needed to dull pain to the “appropriate” amount. And your body doesn’t want to completely kill pain! After all, pain serves a purpose – making you aware that something is wrong, and the more severe the injury, the more pain you feel to make sure you don’t ignore it and cause further harm.
Of course, sometimes we want to override our body’s pain pathways and dull pain further, especially once we’re already doing all we can to treat the underlying cause. So why not just take beta endorphin then? Well there are a few problems. Beta endorphin is a polypeptide (ie small protein, coded for by a gene), which means it’s not easily made artificially in a lab, at least before CRISPR and other gene editing techniques, and also your body breaks down most proteins you ingest into their constituent amino acids during digestion. So it likely wouldn’t be active at all taken orally. Morphine occurs naturally in poppies at a high enough concentration to be directly useful as a painkiller.
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