Topic: Antidepressants actually make you depressed?

[J. Carney]

Quote:
Yes, but we know how dangerous they are. Synthetics often show long term or permanent side effects that we never imagined. Remember Thalidomide?  

Actually, no, I don't. Im fairly young (25) and though I'm going into pre-pharmacy this fall (took a 3 year detour on the road to higher learning) I still ogt a long way to go.

Please enlighten me- I can already tell it's going to be bad... but I can tell you it's probably only going to be on par with the side effects that can be produced in varrious instances by nicotine or tobacco tars.

[Bonk]

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/thalidomide/start.html
http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/thalidomide.htm

Oddly enough, Thalidomide is being used in AIDS therapy  now - kind of interesting... maybe the synthetics aren't all bad - we just need to be very careful and take the time to do it right - but some things we just have to learn the hard way I guess.

Prepare yourself well for pharmacy - I made the dean's list in science in my first year but did not get in  to pharmacy when I applied due to competition from rural high school students with artificially high averages. 50% of that class failed second year organic chemistry - I checked their section - I coasted through with a B+ no problem... now advanced organic gave me a bit more trouble... all this was 12 years ago now though.

P.S. my father owns a pharmacy and I'm a chemist...  

[Bonk]

" nicotine or tobacco tars"

The worst component in tobacco smoke is benzo[a]anthracene (potent carcinogen - probably due to xenoestrogenic effects). You'll get the same dose by smoking sawdust however.  Thalidomide is another class of toxin altogether. (It's not planar, there will free rotation around that central bond with little to no stearic hinderance)

Also be aware that many of the toxins present in tobacco smoke are only there because it is grown on land banned for food agriculture by the fda. I guess it's ok to poison smokers.  

The pesticides of the past are to blame - many containing arsenic or organophospates similar to those used in nerve gas weapons... ironically tobacco produces it's own natural insecticide - nicotine.

Organically grown tobacco is free of many of these contaminants.

I even got Health Canada to pull an anti-smoking TV ad that quoted many of these toxins - using this logic to reveal the disinformation .

[J. Carney]

Thanks... interesting. Sounds like if they had  studied the drug a little more effectively than they apparently did (thoughi'm not citing this as the only problem here by any means) a lot of the problems couldhave been prevented. It sounds like, from the tone of this article, the doc in question seriously skimped on his research- if he did any at all.. Today, testing to discover side effects on fetal growth is a real high priority- I imagine that is in no small part to this little screw up you just pointed out!

I see no real reason to discount it for AIDS treatment. An AIDS patient would not be too concerned with side effects relating to pregnancy. Too bad it looks like it didn't work out too well; the article says that it did help with the 'waisting disease' symptom of AIDS, but it failed in the hoped-for result of lowering the TNF count in HIV cases (I'm guessing that this treatment is prior to onset of full-blown AIDS).

My cousin and his wife are both pharmicists and my best friend gets her doctorate in Medicinal Chemistry this fall if all goes well. They are going to help me through Organic... even though I know it will be quite a pull to get through it even with all the help. I've been out of school for a while (3 years), so i'm going to spend this fall remediating myself on math and chemistry as prep for getting myself into this mess.

PS- I know about tobacco making it's won insecticide- we use dry snuff as an insecticide/pesticide on our garden; it even works on animals like deer, though goats don't seem to mind it.

[Bonk]

I'm not saying smoking is a good thing here... take this example:

The cancer sticks I smoke deliver on average 20mg of carbon monoxide and 0.2mg of hydrogen cyanide, the partial pressure of both of these compounds is effectively zero in clean blood - so generaly all that is inhaled is taken into the blood. (depending on how emphesemic the lungs already are)

The molecular mass of Carbon monoxide is ~28g/mol and hydrogen cyanide is ~27g/mol
there are 6.022x10^23 molecules per mole (Avogadro's number)
so
20mg CO >> 0.020g/28g = 7.14x10^-4 moles = 4.30x10^20 molecules of CO
0.2mg HCN >>  0.0002g/27g = 7.41x10^-6 moles = 4.46x10^18 molecules of HCN
~= 4.34x10^20 molecules of CO and HCN in total

Both CN- and CO are irreversibly adsorbed by hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin has four heme planes with each site binding more easily than the last.
The average red blood cell contains roughly 150 000 hemoglobin molecules.

So one of my cigarettes will kill  (4.34x10^20/4)/150000 = 7.24x10^18 blood cells

That's 7.24 trillion blood cells dead from one cigarette - its no wonder two flights of stairs leaves me winded.

(now this assumes that each red blood cell takes up four CO or CN- but of course not all will, but will be reduced in function. This is an overestimate or worst case scenario. I'm not 100% on these calculations but I think they're roughly correct - feel free to find an error!)

Undoubtedly the bilirubin will be much higher in the stool of smokers. It's gotta wear on the liver removing all that dead weight in blood.


Best of luck with your studies, you've got some good support there. Work hard and stay away from the campus pub!
 

[J. Carney]

*is slightly pleased that he understood enough of that last post to follow you*

Thanks for the well wishes... I do have a good crew backing me. And I am definately going to have to stay away from the bars... that's what messed me up the last time I went to school. Lessons learned the hard way are seldom forgotten.

Yeah... sorry I fell into common 'anti-tobacco' terms in my first post. I didn't know the excat name of the substance in question. I do know that the reason that it is so hard on smokers is that only the most hard-working professional firefighters inhale enough wood smoke to even begin to compete with the lightest of smokers in the amount of damage that the 'tar' does to the lungs.

In fact, there is a new trend in Alabama to require fire fighters to cease and desist the smoking not related to their hair catching on fire while at work because of a claim (definately related) of intensified cases of emphesema and heart disease/arterial hardening and (probably related) cases of accelerated development of cancerous growths in the lungs.  

The overworking of the liver you mentioned is something that I have never though of before, but I see it now that you point it out. Guess it doesn't help out that a lot of heavy drinkers are also smokers!

[Bonk]

 

Quote:
PS- I know about tobacco making it's won insecticide- we use dry snuff as an insecticide/pesticide on our garden; it even works on animals like deer, though goats don't seem to mind it.  

Very cool, an evironmentally conscious choice!      (dang goats will eat anything!)

Soapy water works well short term for severe infestations too. - Biodegradeable phosphate free detergent of course - like ivory soap flakes. The critters drown because the surface tension of the water is broken by the surfactant and the water can then get in the spiracles (the entry points to their tracheal respiratory network) where normally surface tension prevents it. Which you probably already know if you use a nicotine insecticide, but I felt like describing it anyway!

P.S. Sorry to go a bit OT on your thread there JMM, I just had to ramble about something tonight I guess.  

[Bonk]

 

Quote:
only the most hard-working professional firefighters inhale enough wood smoke to even begin to compete with the lightest of smokers in the amount of damage that the 'tar' does to the lungs.  

God bless the Scott Pack! (May I never need one again  )  

[SL-Punisher]

Quote:
Ah, I see what you are saying and I cannot really disagree. (Sorry if I "knee-jerked" on ya there.)  

No apology needed If all my disagreements were as calm and reasoned as ours and each misunderstanding handled as easily....well the world would be a much better place.