Now new discoveries are providing further explanations. In the past couple of years scientists have found that our bodies produce their own pain-killing drugs, called enkephalins and endorphins. “It appears,” explains Dr. Solomon Snyder of Johns Hopkins University, “that the human brain produces its own morphine.”

It was in December 1975 that the discovery of the first natural analgesics was announced. These were isolated from pigs’ brains, and called enkephalins. Then, early in 1976, the first of a number of related substances, named endorphins, were isolated. Beta-endorphin, the second endorphin discovered, was isolated from dried camel pituitary glands. It is, reportedly, “at least 20 to 40 times more effective than morphine in the relief of pain when injected directly into the brains of rats and mice.”

No one yet knows the exact functions of enkaphalins and endorphins in dulling or blocking out pain. “The endorphins are probably not constantly secreted,” says Dr. Avram Goldstein of Stanford University in California; “they are held in reserve for extreme situations” when the body needs relief from pain.

Bruce Pomeranz of Canada’s University of Toronto believes that endorphins explain why acupuncture kills pain. He suggests that the needles stimulate nerves that cause body cells to release endorphins. The endorphins then go to work somehow to dull the nerves that are involved in the perception of pain.

These drugs, it is believed, may also answer the mystery of those people who do not have the ability to feel pain. “If their brains or bloodstreams contain higher levels of one or another of these chemicals,” notes one researcher, “their insensitivity to pain would perhaps be explained.”

Under the Kingdom rule, the various body mechanisms involved in controlling pain​—including the body’s production of its own pain-killing drugs—​will function properly. Thus pain will never cause suffering again!