How do drugs work in the organism?
439212
Every drug reacts differently and there are many chemical reactions.\n\nThe most common method a drug uses though is to inhibit an enzyme that is causing the anomaly.  It does this by binding to a "pocket" in the enzyme, most typically by ionic interactions.  These are either in the form of hydrogen bonding, pi-pi stacking etc.  These drugs are VERY specific and out of the thousands of different enzymes in your body they will target the right one.  Most commonly due to the new ionic interactions it causes the enzyme to change shape and deform very slightly, which means it cannot combine with another enzyme to promote the disease, or bind specifically to another molecule in your body which would otherwise promote the disease.\n\nThe reasons for drugs are several fold:\n\n1.  They are there to help initiate an enzyme-enzyme interaction that should occur naturally, but isn't;\n2.  They are used to bind to a rogue enzyme which is causing problems, deform the shape and de-activate it, letting your body carry on as normal;\n3.  They take over part of the bodies process and actually are a synthetic replacement for something that does occur naturally, but isn't functioning properly.\n\nHow individual drugs work is very specific usually to the ailment, so it is difficult to provide general chemical reactions.\n\nI hope this brief explanation marginally helps.
488943
Neurological.  It's disalignment of chemicals in the brain. Certain drugs affect the dopamine balance in the brain.  The brain chemicals responding to these drugs proves it's neurological.
682905
well the central nervous system is  the most complicated system in our body  and more than 90% of the reactions happening in it are chemical reactions and they are divided into intracellular chemical reactions and inter cellular chemical reactions and so every single chemical substance has so many complicated different functions in different parts of the brain and that's why drugs used intreating neurological diseases have so many adverse effects one common group of chemicals acting on the brain are neurotransmitters like DOPAMINE, ACETYLCHOLINE, SEROTONIN GABA, NOR-EPINEPHRINE EPINEPHRINE, NITROGINOXIDE  5-HT ,MELATONIN , GLUTAMATE ,GLYCINE , ASPARTATE ,HOMOCYSTEATE ,PROLACTINE SUBSTANCE P, AND THE OPIOID LIKE SYSTEM ....................... and so many others\nif you need to know anything more or anything more specific about any of these chemicals or any other chemical feel free to contact me by e-mail
929930
Blood test isn't the best way to find synergisitc effects of drugs. Often the effect may be at the cellular or genetic level. If there is synergism, you'll know from the effects on your body.
632985
The brain is part of the nervous system.  The smallest component of the nervous system are axons, which have a head and a tail.  Millions of these line up head to tail and form the nerve endings in your body.  In the space between each head and tail (called a synapse) chemicals can flow.  When something happens (you prick yourself), an axon signals chemicals to flow between the synapse, activate the next axon, and the next until the message reaches your brain and you react.  Different drugs affect the ability for these chemicals to flow across the synapse (speeding up, slowing down, or not at all) or wipe out axons all together leaving gaps in the message chain.
541977
That's a HUGE question you're asking, if I understand it correctly.  While the body is made up mostly of water, there's also an *enormous* number of biochemicals in the human body working in extremely complex ways, all of which affect human behavior, from whether your hungry to the color of your eyes to whether you're alive or dead.  Even biochemists don't know yet exactly what they all are and how they all work.\n\nA (very) partial list:\n\nhemoglobin\nserotonin\nbrain natriuretic peptide\nadenosine triphosphate\nacid phosphatase\nD-oxy-ribonucleic acid (DNA)\ntriglyceride\npyruvate dehydrogenase\nsuccinyl coenzyme-A synthetase\n1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid\nbacteriorhodopsin\nbeta-hydroxy beta-methylbutyrate\nfarnesyl pyrophosphate, geranyl pyrophosphate and other acyclic sesquiterpines\n\n...to name a very few.
563183
pharmacologically, a metabolically activated drug is one that has no physiological effect until it's passed through the liver and been metabolized. whichever enzymes metabolize that particular compound modify it to make it active.\n\nit takes careful planning by drug developers to make sure the drug is actually activated after this process, but it's one heck of a clever trick.
166029
Even nerves work with chemical reactions.  Plants have chemicals in them that react to/with the stimuli.  Chemical changes in the plant cause it to change.
723719
It depends on the drug and on the physical condition of the person.\n\nSome drugs are out of the body in minutes, some take a month or more.  If you have problems with your kidneys, liver or certain enzyme systems, different drugs will hang around longer.
380045
In animals and plants, cells are the smallest units that can be considered alive. Your body, like all human bodies, is a collection of many many cells. Nearly all cells have the same basic parts - a nucleus, which has DNA, and a cell membrane, which acts as sort of a skin for the cell, keeping insides in, and outsides out. \n\nCells are arranged together to form tissues, which in turn arrange together to form organs, which fit together to form systems (like the digestive system), which in turn all keep you as one functioning living being!\n\nMost cells in a large organism like plants and animals have specialized purposes as well - some are nerve cells, transmitting signals to and from the brain to the rest of the body, some are in your blood, carrying oxygen to the rest of the body, some form your skin, keeping you from getting infected from outside. \n\nCells have their own lifespans, and can reproduce and die.\nSometimes, a mutation happens in cells, and they don't follow their genetic instructions and might grow and reproduce abnormally -- this is what cancer is.
129282
What you produce yourself in your own body.  Remember, any time you adjust your body chemistry, the biochemicals that produce the same effect are reduced, thus creating more and more a dependency on the external substance to produce the same effect.  This a basic fundamental property of biochemistry.  This is one reason why certain medicines are prescription only, and why many illegal drugs require greater and greater amounts to bring about the same effect.\nBe careful to decide whether it is worth the reduced brain activity that will likely follow for a time.\nAt the same time, certain elements, vitamins, and minerals are necessary for basic brain function.  This might be a more productive line, kind of like making sure the troops have the supplies there and ready before they need them, so they don't have to wait for grub before going to battle.  A brain that doesn't have the necessary materials slows down until it does.
1144585
Ok here you go. They die of suffication;\n\nDoctors have a wonderfully complete understanding of how sleeping pills such as pentobarbital kill animals.  These drugs bind with protein molecules called GABA receptors on the surface of nerve cells.  The same protein receptor molecules bind at the same time with a neurotransmitter chemical called GABA, which gives them their name.  Barbiturates and other sleeping pills accentuate the action of GABA, which is to cause the receptor molecule to allow chloride ions to enter the nerve cells.  Since the chloride ions are negatively charged, they make the inside the nerve cell more negatively polarized, which in turn, makes the nerve cells less likely to fire (to generate nerve activity).  When the nerve cells which stimulate the muscles of breathing are inhibited from firing action potentials by GABA and by sleeping pills, the animal stops breathing.  When breathing stops, the animal dies within a few minutes from lack of oxygen in the lungs.  No doubt these same mechanisms explain how barbiturates kill people who take too high a dosage, either accidentally or with suicidal intention.\n\nHave fun!
359112
You first have to realize that anitbiotics usually work by targeting some necessary life process that goes on within a cell. It could protein production (aka Translation), it could target gene expression (aka Transcription) or other processes like membrane and cell wall production. These are by far the most common targets for antibiotics (with protein production and cell wall production making up the biggest bulk of the targets.)\n\nAs far as viruses go, you have to realize that viruses don't do these things on their own. So you can't target something that doesn't exist in the agent you want to fight off.\n\nYou see viruses are obligate intracellular pathogens. Which means that have to invade a living cell in order to reproduce. Because viruses don't have the machinery to make their own proteins or transcribe their own genes they have to hijack the machinery of the cell they infect to do it for them.\n\nThis should make it easy to understand why we can't developer antiviral medications that work the same way antibiotics work to help rid our bodies of viral infections. If we develop a drug that stops viral protein production, because it is using the same machinery we normally use, we would in effect be killing all our cells, not just the ones that have viruses in them. These types of drugs would be way to toxic to our healthy cells.\n\nYou might ask yourself, well then why do antibiotics work on bacteria if they are targeting processes inside of bacteria that we need to do also (ie. protein production or cell membrane production)? The answer to that is evolution. Enough evolutionary time has passed that the processes we use to do these things aren't similar enough to cause cross reactivity. As time passes, things change. That's the basis for evolution. The longer two organisms have time to diverge from one another the more able researchers are able to use those differences to treat if one chooses to.\n\nIn the case of bacteria. We can take advantage of the differences between them and us to get rid of them if they infect us.
327510
Excretory systems regulate the chemical composition of body fluids.\n\nhttp://www.fi.edu/biosci/systems/excretion.html
872628
Yes, researchers know how they work, in detail.  Most of the newer drugs are designed at the molecular level to perform specific functions.  Prozac is a perfect example.  It was the first of what has become an entire class of drugs known as SSRIs, or Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors.  Prozac is used to treat Depression.  by design, it increases the amount of available Serotonin, (a neurotransmitter) in the synapses of the brain, by slowing the rate at which the cells that excrete the serotonin can reabsorb it.\n\nThe man who led the design team has said that he did it just to prove he could.
170878
Since this would involve subjecting a living cell or organism to the effects of the drug...and let's say that we are talking about a human;\nfactors include how fast and thorough the drug would go through the organism, how fast and thorough the drug would exit the organism, side effects of the drug, the actual physical makeup of the organism, administration method, medical background of the organism, what other drugs and nutrients are present in the organism, if the organism is active or not during administration...I'm sure I could go on!
1066207
Cough medicine does not work by physics. It works by biochemistry. It either suppresses the cough reflex neurologically or lowers the production of phlegm. Neither is physical.