I'm absolutely fascinated by #science news like this.
Being somebody who works with the epithelial system (along with the musculoskeletal system), I'm not surprised that this kind of communication happens in our largest organ and its associated tissues. We are NOT machines! The mind-body split is a fiction!
I've known for years that connective tissue has a contractile quality and a communicative quality that is about as glacial in speed as they are describing this communication system for the epithelial tissues. I'm never surprised when science proves the things that my felt sense has known for decades because of what I do for a living.
I also came across an article a couple months ago that talked about our brain possibly using photons to communicate and create consciousness as well. That was amazing! That made sense to me.
What would we do without science? Science highlights the wonder of the world. Without wonder, who are we?
My thought after reading this article was, I'll bet the epithelial cells also communicate the *opposite* of pain. It's not like they laid these epithelial cells out in a nice, even, single layer and then gave them a relaxing massage. 
https://phys.org/news/2025-03-silent-epithelial-cells.html