Millions of people take medicine everyday, but most don’t understand the effort and research it takes to make them and ensure the medicine acts properly within the body. Medications are broken down in the GI track, and then absorbed into the bloodstream where then the liver decides with to do with them. This is called the first pass. The first pass processes the drug into active and inactive metabolites. Active causes for prolonged activity. Some drugs can last months while most are shorter. Also, the time of day in which the drug is administered could have direct affects on how it gets absorbed. People who take drugs in the morning report less GI side affects than those mid day or night. The older one is, the slow the drug will be absorbed (this could be because the body is more sensitive to the drug). The chemical components of medications can be affected by other chemical components of medications. This is why you can’t mix certain drugs. The more drugs one takes, the more likely a change will occur and potentially alter the benefits of the drug. With this knowledge and these conditions, the person taking the drug must be cautious because the chemical side affects of improper usage could be fatal.
This is really interesting to me because I want to research drugs and the effects it has on the body. This video allowed for a general understanding of the drug flow process. How it enters the body, is broken down in the body, how it gets activated, and the side affects of taking the drug wrong. These conditions are really interesting to research because with new drugs coming out, the likelihood a new category in which other drugs effect it or how a certain age/time of day/or diet handles it, is going to be high. This research is extremely important because millions of people use drugs per day.
Submitted by Dana Smith
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