Concept of drugs

[anachronistic]

This one goes out to all my homies in the science department.

I never really paid attention in high school, cause they never taught anything in the science classes that really caught my interest. But I do have an interest for science; earth science... the nervous system and senses... sexuality... shit like that.

But something's been on my mind for a while: drugs. Not just drugs though; food too; nutrition.

Anyway, here's my idea:

All things you eat have mind altering effects. There's hallucinogens, depressants, stimulants, and all that. Those have active chemicals in them that cause those effects. Isn't there chemicals in everything we eat, though, that in turn effects the mind? Perhaps we no longer realize the effects of most of the things we eat, since our body has developed in order to require some of those things. I guess that may have something to do with evolution, too.

Totally not my subject, obviously... but I am interested in it. What kinds of things should I be reading about? Anyone feel like explaining those things to me?

I wish I could explain it better... this is one of my tylenol/aspirin/robotussin induced posts. I have some kind of cold and am very tired and probably shouldn't be up right now. Ehh but I couldn't sleep and I just finished eating breakfast. Maybe I'll eventually get back into a normal sleeping habit.

[Illusional]

i understand what you are trying to say. it's like when people eat chocolate and they have a sexual satiety in the mind.

i think that certain foods does allow us to release certain chemicals in the mind that satisfies our bodies. they are called aphrodisiacs. i'm not too familiar on this topic, but you might want to start there.

raverboy

[anachronistic]

Yeah, somethign like taht.. but I think everything is an aphodisiac.. but perhaps after years of consuming, we are kind of numb to the effect or something.

[Illusional]

well i'm not saying that every food is an aphrodisiac itself, but for the most part, i think that because we have been indulgent in self satisfication, we probably are numb too all these little benefits.

i don't eat chocolate, but i don't feel a damn thing when i eat oysters. some of it is due to the fact that i think these aphrodisiac thing is a bunch of crap.

raverboy

[anachronistic]

Even if there aren't those little effects, eating some foods does make us feel satisfied. The same way you breath oxygen makes you feel fresh... the same way being in the sun seems to energize you.

[Tedel]

Well, a friend is a doctor. We were talking about medicine last evening. She told me that, who wanted to learn medicine, needed to learn:

1. Anatomy: Which are all the parts of the body, where they are and what they do.
2. Phisiology: How all the parts of the body interact.
3. Every specific illness characteristics, symptoms and the like.
4. Every specific treatment.

You can follow that path if you want.

[DoesntMatter]

You would mainly need to learn an assload of biochemistry, physical chemistry, and organic chemistry to gain a true understanding of medicine and how it works

[boobaa]

Lets talk about hallucinogens now.

[Dasein]

I'm bumping this thread to see what Eco has to say.

Hehe I'm a sh*t stirrer..

[misombra]

Lets talk about hallucinogens now.

peruvian shamans drank hallucinogenic tea to heal sick people.

[IndiReloaded]

Are you talking about 'natural drugs'? Its a misnomer, but there's a lot of interest in it. Heres a link. I suspect it might even be what our friend Eco is involved in (if not, mbe interesting):

[url]http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/InstituteofAgri-FoodLandUse/Research/FoodSafety/Drugs/NaturalDrugDiscovery/[/url]

[mobin]

A novel concept, "drug evolution", is proposed to develop chemical libraries that have a high probability of finding drugs or drug candidates. It converts biological evolution into chemical evolution. In this paper, we present "hybridization" drug evolution, which is the equivalent of sexual recombination of parental genomes in biological evolution. The hybridization essentially shuffles the building blocks of the parent drugs and ought to drug(s); no drug evolution can otherwise occur.

---------
Mobin

drivenwide.com

[Tedel]

peruvian shamans drank hallucinogenic tea to heal sick people.

Coca leaves are not that hallucinogenic to make you feel drugged with an infusion. Moreover, the infusion is very healthy. There are other beverages, however, that were also based on coca leaves and put you to sleep. That's what Paracas people used to anaestesiate their warriors to heal them after battles 900 years ago.

[IndiReloaded]

A novel concept, "drug evolution", is proposed to develop chemical libraries that have a high probability of finding drugs or drug candidates. It converts biological evolution into chemical evolution. In this paper, we present "hybridization" drug evolution, which is the equivalent of sexual recombination of parental genomes in biological evolution. The hybridization essentially shuffles the building blocks of the parent drugs and ought to drug(s); no drug evolution can otherwise occur.

Great post except drug evolution is not exactly 'novel'. I met a guy about 10 years ago who was doing a form of combinatorial chemistry looking for new ligands that could be developed as drugs. His name is Larry Gold. At the time he had a company that was developing a process called SELEX. I think they got bought by one of the bigger Phama companies. You might want to research.

[doppelgaenger]

I think he was going for the idea that everything affects us chemically, to which effect is not always noticed physically