Geek Out: The Keys That Explain (Almost) Everything.

Adrenaline receptors:

This works both ways, adrenaline receptors won’t allow anything other than adrenaline to fit into them and adrenaline can’t fit into anything other than an adrenaline receptor.

The same is true for insulin, melatonin, thyroid hormones – any hormone you can think of!

Similarly, dopamine will fit into only dopamine receptors which in turn will only allow dopamine to fit into them etc etc.

If you’re wondering what everyone else is singing in the shower, here are a few suggestions!

Might:

Everything that we understand about the whole process of labor really suggests that sex and the consequent oxytocin release should indeed help push a women whose uterus is ready (and that is a crucial part) into labor but the evidence is definitely mixed.

However, oxytocin (or a synthetic version of) is absolutely used to induce labor in overdue women, so maybe the oxytocin produced by well, ordinary sex, sometimes isn’t quite enough?!

Unfortunately, around 1 in 10 pregnancies will result in a preterm birth but for reasons other than oxytocin - it appears that the warrier pose, singing, sex or doing all 3 at the same time is not something that causes preterm labor in normal circumstances (as always if you are reading this wondering about this in relation to your own health situation, please talk with your doctor, PA, nurse, nurse practitioner).

Androgen insensitivity syndrome/most severe form:

This is a categorized as a rare disorder, affecting approximately 1 in 20,000 individuals, to differing degrees.  It’s caused by a genetic mutation which results in an improperly formed testosterone receptor, depending on the degree of malformation of the receptor, testosterone might have some affect (partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, PAIS) or the testosterone might not be able to slot into (bind is the technical term) at all to the receptor, in which case the person has complete AIS, or CAIS.

The lack of penis development happens because of the lack of testosterone but the breast development comes from the fact that testosterone needs to go through only one further reaction to produce estrogen.  In these people, the testosterone levels are often high and even a small percentage of that getting converted to estrogen can drive breast development.

There’s plenty of stuff out there on the internet about this disorder but here’s a good place to start:

Baby daughter:

This baby will have external genitalia that appear female but will not have a uterus and ovaries as they don’t have the female chromosomes, XX, required for the development of the female reproductive structures. In these children, raised as girls, it can be a devastating when investigations into missing periods during the teenage years, reveals a “mismatch” between the external genitalia, the socializing of the child as a girl and the newly-discovered male chromosomes.

Adrenaline mimicking drug:

Drugs that are designed to look and act like a naturally occurring hormone or neurotransmitter are called agonists (which really makes now sense as the word derives from the Greek for competitor, which sounds like an agonist would compete against a natural substance!)

Large amounts of:

If you’re someone who has for example, a pollen allergy that gives you a “scratchy” or “wheezy” throat, that’s the result of some histamine being released, both causing the diameter of your airways to reduce a little as well as acting as an irritant substance.

The main difference between a regular allergic response and an anaphylactic allergic response is amount - in the latter, much, much more histamine is produced with two main life-threatening consequences:

• blood pressure rapidly plummets as blood vessel walls become very leaky and fluid (minus the red cells), leaks out into the space of the body. That reduction in fluid in the blood could be enough to prevent flow of blood and that’s a potentially fatal situation.

• airways close down, potentially to the point where the person suffocates as they can’t move any air in or out of the lungs.

  Yikes! Giving a person an anti-histamine at this point is not very useful - the histamine they released has already got into and activated histamine receptors in blood vessels and airways. Enter the epi-pen, where the epi- is short for epinephrine, the US term for adrenaline. This adrenaline can act on the airways at its own receptors, stimulating the airways to open up, almost instanteously.

Block:

Drugs that are designed to look enough like a naturally occurring hormone or neurotransmitter to be able to fit into a particular receptor, but then sit there and do nothing, are called antagonists - feels a bit more logical than the word agonist doesn’t it?

The anti-histamines many of us take are classed as “competitive antagonists” as they compete with the naturally occurring substance to get to the receptor.