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Scientists may have found a painkiller that you can't overdose on.

A new candidate drug could help manage pain without harmful side effects.

A few years ago, I got my wisdom teeth out. Ironically, one of the worst parts of the experience was the painkillers.

I was prescribed oxycodone, an opioid painkiller, after the procedure. And though it helped with the recovery, I felt like taking those pills was a bigger deal than, you know, having part of my body surgically removed.


I disliked taking them because I ended up with killer nausea (I actually had to get another prescription to deal with that), but I also knew (and had a stern warning from the pharmacist) that opioids can sometimes be dangerous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad we have opioid painkillers.

Opioids are a class of drugs named after the opium poppy. They include medicines like oxycodone and morphine as well as medicines-turned-illicit drugs like heroin. They're an indispensable part of modern medicine. Few other drugs approach their ability to reduce pain.

But there are big drawbacks to using them.

They can be incredibly addictive. In fact, the U.S. currently has an epidemic of people addicted to either prescription or illicit opioids.

They also come with some serious side effects, including halting your respiration. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates than more than 70 people a day die from an opioid overdose.

Overdose kits can save lives but only if they get there in time. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

So that begs the question: What if we could make an opioid without all those drawbacks?

Scientists might have just created an overdose-proof opioid. Oh, and early tests hint that it might not be addictive, either.

A new study published online Aug. 17, 2016, in Nature explained that a team of scientists just developed a candidate drug that kills pain without interfering with our ability to breathe.

They also think the drug might circumvent the brain's addiction circuit, although they need to do more work to see if this holds up.

One of the coolest things about this is how they created the drug.

Instead of tweaking an existing medicine, they started from scratch.

Opioids work by locking on to molecules in our cells known as receptors, especially one called the mu opioid receptor. For a long time this was a black box, but we recently figured out the mu opioid receptor's atomic structure.

It might look like a tie-die Rorschach test, but to a scientist, this could be a treasure map. Image from Protein Data Bank/Wikimedia Commons.

Why is this a big deal? It's like the difference between trying random keys in a door and being given the lock's specific blueprint. So rather than having to try chemicals one by one, the scientists were able to create a custom design on a computer.  Over a few weeks, they ran four trillion virtual experiments, looking for the perfect key — one that'd hit only the mu opioid receptor while avoiding the ones that influenced breathing.

After a while, they ended up with about two dozen candidates, which they then synthesized and tested in mice. Those experiments led to the new drug.

There's a long, long way to go with this new drug. But if this works, it could help a lot of people someday.

Kim Sullivan's son died of an opioid overdose. She's since become a public health education advocate. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

"Morphine transformed medicine," said one of the scientists, professor Brian Shoichet, in a press release. "There are so many medical procedures we can do now because we know we can control the pain afterwards. But it's obviously dangerous too. People have been searching for a safer replacement for standard opioids for decades."

It's premature to say whether this drug'll hit the shelves. But who knows — one day someone might be able to walk into a pharmacy after getting their wisdom teeth out, secure in the knowledge that their painkiller is not only effective but safer than ever before.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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A woman looking at her phone while sitting on the toilet.


One of the most popular health trends over the last few years has been staying as hydrated as possible, evidenced by the massive popularity of 40-oz Stanely Quencher cups. The theory among those who obsess over hydration is that, when you pee clear, you’ve removed all the waste in your body and are enjoying the incredible benefits of being 100% hydrated. Congratulations.

However, according to Dr. Sermed Mezher, an NHS doctor in the UK, peeing clear isn’t always a sign of being healthy.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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