Hey all,

Since I'm always busy with med school and really don't do much else (it's not so bad, people are nice) I figure I'll just post about it.

I know we have some people who smoke, but I learned recently some interesting facts. Even if you've been smoking for several years, it's still a good idea to quit because the damage done to your lungs can actually be reversed!! See, smoking causes chronic irritation of the epithelium in the esophagus. Translation: smoking bothers the skin lining your throat.

This causes the skin cells, called columnar epithelium, to become replaced by squamous epithelium. See, squamous epithelium can withstand more stressful environments, so the body is trying to adapt to the smoking irritation.

This sounds like a good thing, but it's not. See, columnar epithelium has cilia on it. Cilia are basically little tentacle-thingies that, in the throat, are really important for moving mucous in the throat up to your mouth where you can cough it out. If this columnar epithelium is replaced by squamous epithelium like it is in people who smoke, you won't have the cilia to move this mucous. What happens? The mucous gets all gunked up in your throat, and you get "smoker's cough."

But like I said before, this damage can be reversed if it's not too late! The columnar cells aren't magically transformed into squamous cells. I said they were replaced - the body tells itself to make more squamous instead of columnar cells, but if there's no more irritation the body can go back to making columnar cells for the throat!

This doesn't even take into account that smoking increases your risk of developing lung cancer by a factor of 5!

So the moral of the story is to not smoke, and if you do, you really should stop.




Hope some of you found that story interesting. Yay for health awareness!
Vin

YING!!!

Thanks for taking time to make an update here! Glad to see everything is going well for you.

And that smoking explanation is quite scary

I'm looking at you yinGz >:[

Thought of yingz when I read it too. Think of your columnar epithelium.

Wow, that was actually really interesting! You should find out if damage to the liver caused by drinking is reversible...it may not be too late to save Yingz

You should update more of what you learn Teaching others what you've learnt is a good way to study, too!

Where is yinGz's response and promise not to smoke anymore?

Keep this bumped until she does!

thank you vin! glad to see you are doing well and already excited by what you are learning.


also, inb4 YINGZ! oh wait, too late. ... YINGZ!

YING!!!
I'ma keep bumping this until you read, reply, and agree never to smoke again.

There's also a protein called alpha-1-trypsinase. Another protein, called elastase, chews up elastic fibers. You want elastic fibers in the lungs so the lungs can expand and contract, so you don't want elastase in the lungs. Normally, alpha-1-trypsinase can take care of elastase.

BUT IN SMOKING, ALPHA-1-TRYPSINASE IS INACTIVATED. DUN DUN DUN!

So now, not only do you have columnar cells being replaced with squamous epithelium (which can easily turn into cancer, minor detail I forgot to mention... ), you also have this inactivated alpha-1-trypsinase, which means elastase can go around destroying the elasticity of your lungs.

Yay for healthy living!
Vin

The dangers of alcoholism ~~~~~~~

(My first exam is in a week, exactly, so I really need to review this shiznit )

Ok! This is a short one, but pretty relevant. Why does the doctor ask you about your drinking habits? Well, besides the obvious problems of alcoholism, high alcohol consumption can affect how your body responds to drugs.

So, when normally consuming alcohol, this protein called alcohol dehydrogenase will take the alcohol you consume and break it down.

However, in alcoholics, the alcohol dehydrogenase is so busy trying to react with all the alcohol in the body that the body calls upon another protein, Cytochrome P450.

The problem with this is that the body can't upregulate CytP450 by itself, so it upregulates ALL the cytochrome proteins. Since there are a lot of proteins in the body and they all do a bunch of different things, you can imagine how this would mess up the body.

So, because alcoholics have these overactive and overabundant proteins, they're going to respond different to drugs that people who have a normal consumption of alcohol (and take care of it with alcohol dehydrogenase only )

Hope you found that insightful and thanks for letting me use the thread as another study tool

-Vin

Yingz, I hope you're paying attention

And Vin, I read all that, and only vaguely understood it lmao. Basically, don't lie about your excessive alcohol consumption (yingz) because if you do, the doctors will prescribe you drugs and they won't work, and you might die. Right?

Bump for Ying!!!