INTERESTING TIMES

I look up cocaine and find this impressive list of slang about it. My goodness. I have never tried it in any form. It was "discovered" in 1860 when someone happened to notice that tasting it numbs the tongue. Pretty soon everybody was using it for toothaches, and in 1894 doctors started using it as a local anesthetic for surgeries, especially to the nose, eyes (lacrimal ducts!), and sinuses. Freud didn't think it was addictive, but it is, because it activates the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, the reward and desire pathway, the addiction pathway. Cocaine is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. It is also a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. But these effects should not happen if it is a tiny local dose. The local numbing effect occurs because cocaine blocks nerve permeability to sodium, preventing nerve transmission. The vasoconstrictive effect is due to the inhibition of norepi reuptake. Cocaine is the only anesthetic that is vasoconstrictive, the rest vasodilate necessitating the use of injected epinephrine to minimize bleeding and loss of the anesthetic into the systemic circulation. Can anybody tell me where the world's bounty of cocaine is coming from these days?

On Saturday night I accidentally deleted internet explorer from my computer, and spent all day Sunday internet-free. I now understand that I am an addict, and I need to take measures to moderate my internet usage. I got so much done on Sunday!!! It was wonderful. =-]

What does pituitary mean, from the Latin? (think onomatopoeia...)
to spit mucus
ptuo = to spit, pituita = mucus

What do you call a hormone that acts on neighboring cells?
paracrine

Are pituitary hormones steroid, steroid type, or peptide hormones?
peptide, all of them are

What do you call the loss of lateral visual fields?
bitemporal hemianopsia

Damage to what part of the pituitary causes diabetes insipidus, and which hormone is lacking?
( self quiz from SSL's notes )

The other night Suz and I watched Supersize Me. It was more interesting than I expected. If you haven't seen it, basically the movie tracks a healthy young man (Morgan Spurlock) who decides to experiment on himself by eating only McDonald's food for an entire month. His girlfriend is a vegan chef, so he normally eats mainly vegetables. But it becomes apparent that part of his motivation is a certain relish for big greasy burgers.
( more )

This is old news, but new to me. A vaccine called TA-CD has been developed that is made of a combination of cocaine and deactivated cholera toxin. By injecting both into a person at the same time, an immune reaction is induced by which the body makes antibodies against the cocaine itself. The body remembers cocaine as an "invader" and produces massive amounts of antibodies anytime cocaine is detected.

( more )

Today Suzanne talked with her father and her sister and found out more about the circumstances of her birth. Her mother's blood type was B-. Her father's, O+. Suzanne was a second child. So her mother was Rh-, her father Rh+, and her sister was born before they knew to test mothers and babies for Rh compatibility. Or at least before they did it in Globe. Nowadays every Rh- mother with a possibly Rh+ fetus is treated with a drug that prevents her from mounting an immune response, and protects future babies. But Suzanne's mother had no such medical advice, for her girls born 1943 and 1955.

( more )