Do endorphins help in healing

Answer 1

My short answer: Do endorphins help in healing? 1) They may mask pain which protects the healing wound from unnecessary prodding and scratching by the wounded person. 2) They may facilitate the healing action performed by and to the skin's epithelial cells. 3) Some reports claim that endorphins can be generated by the skin cells in the vicinity of the wound. My long answer: Gentle disclaimer: I am a lay person with an interest in the physiology of endorphins. Please take everything I write here with skepticism. I rely only on websites posted by universities or on peer-reviewed scientific journals. Still, my information may be muddled since I am not a scientist. Hopefully, my answers may point you to a line of inquiry that you yourself can validate elsewhere. Endorphins are complex proteins with the ability to reduce pain and invoke a sense of well-being. Scientists have noticed that endorphins are found in fairly high concentrations at the site of a wound. This cannot be random, since endorphins degrade very rapidly. For them to remain at a wound site means the body is constantly sending new endorphins to that area. 1) Clearly, nature uses endorphins to soothe pain. The only other substance that soothes pain as well is morphine (or other opioids). Why would nature see the need to soothe that pain? Maybe to prevent undue touching/scratching/picking at the site of healing. (Think about this in the context of our caveman days and the explanation makes good sense). 2) Recently, scientists have found that endorphins play a role in the growth of epithelial cells. Those are the live cells that underly our inanimate surface cells. Some scientists have compared epidermis cells to stem cells in their ability to morph into whatever is needed by the body. My guess is that endorphins either assist in the transformation of epithelial cells into healed skin or scar tissue. Or perhaps endorphins aid in the generation of healthy new skin cells. Endorphin molecules are attacked by the body's own enzymes soon after release. These enzymes chemically break the endorphin's long molecular chain into shorter segments. I have read that these fragments of endorphins can then attach themselves to entirely different neuroreceptors. Sounds like Science Fiction, but these broken fragments may play a different role than the intact endorphin molecules did. Because endorphins have a fairly short life (minutes or perhaps hours), it's surprising that they stay around wound sites.The body apparently sends new endorphins to replenish the old ones throughout the healing process. 3) Only recently, I found a report that claims that skin cells can actually create endorphins. This idea strains credibility, to my limited knowledge. Endorphins are some of the body's most intricately complex molecules. The idea that simple skin cells could produce them seems far-fetched. Most medical literature I've read shows that the pituitary gland produces endorphins for the central nervous system and the intestines produce endorphins for the enteric nervous system. Still, if it turns out that skin cells can also produce endorphins, then that's relevant to your question about healing. The skin would, in effect, be producing what it needs to heal itself, rather than passively waiting for one of the two nervous systems to take note and dispatch aid to the site. On a personal note, I intuit some sort of important relationship between endorphins and the epithelial cells in the skin. The evidence of this is found in people who distress their skin for dimly understood reasons (self-cutters, suntanners, tattoo devotees, nail-biters, piercers). Maybe their curious interest in mild or severe distress to their skin is a way of tricking nature into releasing endorphins. Who knows?