Pakistani Fire Walkers! Who Knew!

"The medication was discovered after researchers learned about a family of fire walkers in Pakistan and discovered that they lacked a gene allowing pain signals to fire in their skin. Members of this family could walk over hot coals without flinching."

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/30/health/fda-approves-painkiller-suzetrigine-journavx/index.html

Unlike opioid medications, which dull the sensation of pain in the brain, suzetrigine works by preventing pain-signaling nerves around the body from firing in the first place.

“This drug, what it is doing is interrupting that path, so even though the tissue injury exists, the brain doesn’t know,” Bergese said.

And crucially, suzetrigine creates no euphoria or high like opioids sometimes can, so doctors believe there’s no potential for it to create addiction or dependence in people who use it.

Still, it took scientists 25 years to figure out how to exploit that pain-conducting mechanism to develop a medication.