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Re: It's All Japanese to Me! » madeline

Posted by MM on December 6, 2006, at 1:40:31

In reply to Re: It's All Japanese to Me!, posted by madeline on December 2, 2006, at 19:37:29

> Do you have a specific question that you would like sorted out?
>
> The easy way to understand what an antagonist is is to understand what an agonist is.
>
> I teach this stuff, so if I sound pedantic I apologize in advance.
>
> But let's look at histamine. When you have allergies or a cold the body releases histamine (the agonist). Histamine then binds to receptors (specialized proteins on the surface of cells) in the nose and tells the blood vessels in the nose to dilate causing nasal congestion, and tells the nose to ramp up mucous production causing a runny nose.
>
> When you take an anti-histamine (the antagonist), you block histamine's interaction with it's receptors and guess what? The nose doesn't even know that histamine is around. So, no nasal congestion, no runny nose.
>
> So an agonist (histamine) interacts with histamine receptors and that causes the symptoms of a cold.
>
> An antagonist (anti-histamine) BLOCKS the interaction of histamine with it's receptors, so no cold symptoms.
>
> An antagonist BLOCKS the action of an agonist.
>
> Dopamine antagonists block the action of dopamine, so the body doesn't even know dopamine is there.
>
> etc...
>
> Any other questions just ask.

So, does an antagonist cause the body to make more of whatever it's blocking? I think I'm confusing re-uptake inhibitors with antagonists or something...


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poster:MM thread:709764
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20061203/msgs/710772.html