Chemistry in Action: Love, Chocolate, and Antidepressants

1. Drugs and Medicines

2. Love and Depression Chemistry in Action Scientists have known for a century about phenylethylamine, and in recent times some have held the chemical responsible for our `feelings of love'.

3. Is Chocolate is high in caffeine? The amount of caffeine in a piece of chocolate candy is significantly lower than that in coffee, tea or cola drinks. For instance, a 5 oz cup of instant coffee has between 40 and 108 mg of caffeine, while a one oz milk chocolate bar contains only 6 mg and many confectionery items have no caffeine at all. Q. What is the level of cholesterol in a 1.65 oz. bar of milk chocolate? The American Heart Association recommends that daily cholesterol intake not exceed 300 mg. A chocolate bar is actually low in cholesterol. A 1.65 oz. bar contains only 12 mg! A one oz piece of cheddar cheese contains 30 mg of cholesterol - more than double the amount found in a chocolate bar.

4. These are the two Americas. No other line you can draw is as trenchant as this. On one side, people of normal human appetities for food and sex and creature comforts; on the other, those who crave only the roar and crackle of their own neurons, whipped in a frenzy of synthetic euphoria. Newsweek Nov. 28, 1988, p 64

6. Analgesics Reduce pain Antipyretic Reduce fever Aspirin prostaglandins Analgesics Reduce pain Antipyretic Reduce fever Tylenol More toxic Doesn’t cause Reye’s syndrome

7. Ibuprofen Safer than aspirin Much safer than tylenol All of the analgesics are less toxic than caffeine

8. Oil of wintergreen Based on aspirin structure Topical ointment Capsaicin “Hot” stuff in pepper A potent analgesic for arthritis

11. Ciprofloxacin Cipro Antibacterial

12. What are the symptoms of anthrax? Symptoms of disease vary depending on how the disease was contracted,but symptoms usually occur within 7 days. Cutaneous: Most (about 95%) anthrax infections occur when the bacterium enters a cut or abrasion on the skin, such as when handling contaminated wool, hides, leather or hair products (especially goat hair) of infected animals. Skin infection begins as araised itchy bump that resembles an insect bite but within 1-2 days develops into a vesicle and then a painless ulcer, usually 1-3 cm in diameter, with a characteristic black necrotic (dying) area in the center.Lymph glands in the adjacent area may swell. About 20% of untreated cases of cutaneous anthrax will result in death. Deaths are rare with appropriate antimicrobial therapy.

13. Inhalation: Initial symptoms may resemble a common cold. After several days, the symptoms may progress to severe breathing problems and shock. Inhalation anthrax is usually fatal. Intestinal: The intestinal disease form of anthrax may follow the consumption of contaminated meat and is characterized by an acute inflammation of the intestina l tract. Initial signs of nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting, fever are followed by abdominal pain, vomiting of blood, and severe diarrhea. Intestinal anthrax results in death in 25% to 60% of cases

15. Antiviral Drugs Acyclovir AZT

16. Sex Hormones

18. RU-486 The medication "mifepristone" was invented in France by Dr. Etienne-Emile Baulieu in 1980.

19. Anticancer Drugs Alkylating Agents - add alkyl groups To DNA . . . Hopefully causing cell death.

20. Mustard Gases Gassed, John Singer Sargent (1919)

21. Note similarity to cyclophosphamide

22. Antimetabolites . . . Compounds that Mimic and trick other compounds Folic acid Methotrexate

23. Alcohol

24. The effects of alcohol on sexual behavior has often been cited . . . . as an ice-breaker “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker” Ogden Nash

25. In Macbeth Describing the effects of alcohol, the porter states “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; It provokes the desire, but takes away the performance.”

27. What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?

28. Morphine one of the best of all pain killing drugs

29. Drug discovery based on Natural Products

31. Demerol Naloxone Methadone

32. Cocaine

35. Amphetamine Methamphetamine

36. Hallucinogenic Drugs Mescalin Ectasy

37. Antidepressants • Change in appetite • Change in sleep • Psychomotor retardation • Loss of interest • Decrease sexual drive • Increased fatigue • Guilt feelings • Impaired concentration • Ideas of suicide Prozac