How does alcohol dull pain?
In: Biology
Alcohol has a complex relationship with pain, it’s thought to slightly increase the pain threshold and depress the pain intensity in acute settings. It also diminishes pain intensity in chronic settings (by overshoot them in withdrawal from alcoholism). The mechanisms are unclear, and still bring studied. But the evidence so far suggests alcohol inhibits nociceptive (pain) neural pathways at the level of the spinal cord in a non-opioid mechanism (via NMDA receptors) and also depresses pain perception via its anxiolytic effects (alleviating activity in anxiety circuitry).
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