THE PHYSIO-PSYCHO-NEURO-ENDOCRINOLOGY OF LOVE

Ever wonder why good chemistry is a component of courtship or dating? I mean, why not good mathematics, where good debt scorers date frugal spenders? (BassanioOneSide.) Or why not good social studies where gossip bloggers date paparazzi? (SnoopyNosesOneSide.) The long of it is that we need CHEMISTRY to love, whether eros, philia, storge, philautia or mania. Love is partly pegged to chemistry; that checklist of “xxx things I love about you”. Those of the Christian faith [like me] assent to God’s authorship of love. In the same breath, we assent to the existence of science to deduce explanations from God’s amazing and powerful creations, like love.

Our bodies are more than cells and tissues that are anatomically linked; there are intricate communication systems between the hairs at the tip of the cranium to the nails at the tip of the toes. These systems consist of nerves and chemicals that physiologists call neurotransmitters. These chemicals produce a diverse chain of reactions which teach the brain to love. What psychologists postulate in their science has been tried and tested experimentally to conclude that various love stages are linked to various chemicals.
Lust, the first stage, is an estrogen-testosterone game, and largely the latter’s. Adolescents, when they have a surge in these hormones, experience human sexuality with an intercourse angle to it. Punishing or ignoring this sexual phase of teenagers’ growth will serve more trouble than counseling or guiding would avert.
This infatuation or attraction stage is blamed on Dopamine, the body chemical implicated in addiction. Dopamine says “You’re my all/crazy in love/love is blind/if loving you is wrong.” The fight-or-flight adrenalin hormone literally activates the heart to produce testimony to the cliché lines of “can’t sleep/ tongue-tied/sweat at your sight/ belly butterflies/check me out/Bolt heartbeat/love is heaven”. Some quarters suggest that increasing Dopamine levels can boost romance. This, theoretically, can be achieved by eating foods rich in the dopamine-forming protein tyrosine. Pharmacologically speaking, drugs with dopamine-like activity tend to cause side effects like abnormal dreams, confusion, dry mouth and decreased blood pressure which might affect mental acuity or hallucinations. It is safe to say that some people are present with these symptoms when they fall in love.

Did you know that the reason morphine, heroine or codeine (collectively called opioids) work in the human body, is because the body naturally produces its own opioids complete with their own sites of action? This pharmacological fact supports the healing, loving and euphoric properties of endorphins, the human opioids. Dynorphin, enkephalin and leuenkephalin are three endorphins that leave us elated after hearing, dreaming or being with our laazizi. In Kiswahili, a proverb advises about “ that which the heart loves being a drug”. In the case of a broken heart, endorphins and oxytocin can cure that. Tears produce endorphins and relief; trust a woman to confirm that. Now you know why love is analgesic and how an aroma therapeutic bath of lavender spikes endorphins for a romantic feeling.

So what about non-sexual love? Science pins it on oxytocin and vasopressin. Produced on the brain’s pituitary, oxytocin acts on the uterus to expel fetus during labour and stimulates bonding between a lactating baby and mother. It is suggested that hugging, presence of an infant or eye contact boosts oxytocin which drives stage four of love, attachment. Now we see the science in spending time together with one’s beloved, as oxytocin does not cultivate the abandonment habits of reptiles to their young. Rather, oxytocin makes humans, eagles, wolves and prairie voles unique because they choose to stay-attachment, commitment- pinnacles of love. Vasopressin, also used to adjust the body’s hydration status, is the territorial chemical that defends a loved one. It is higher in males which supports the provider-protector role of men while higher levels of oxytocin support the nurturing role of women. We are only beginning to grasp the psycho-physio-neuro-endocrinology of love. Isn’t it amazing that emotion might have logic behind it? Therein lays the potential to pharmacologically decipher autism, postpartum depression, emotional impact of parenting or lack thereof, and interpersonal relationships. Have a chemically loving year.

This story was featured in the online magazine page 5 of Writers Space Africa | March 2018 .You can download it here for free at http://www.writersspace.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/writers-space-africa-march-2018-edition.pdf

WELCOME TO THE PHARM-ILY

So what is it like being in pharm school? Here's the best way to put it:
1.The day you get your admission letter from the university, nobody can touch you. All should follow the master.

2. Then you get the course catalog and you see you have 12 units while your Bsc friends have 6 ONLY!!! That means 24 CATS,3-IN-1 EXAM UNITS & do not get me started on the FAIL list...

3. Enzymology day 1: E + S, what is E and S? Why is Voet & Voet never on the library shelf? Why am I still doing calculus?

4. Your friends,your leisure, your social life-anything you have ever known of freedom,CONSIDER IT GONE.The library is your haven,the lecture hall your base and the lab your hangout zone.

5.Then when the semester ends, you are sleep-deprived zombie who has to read their results from a public noticeboard. If it is a supplementary, cut short your holidays or rework a whole year's worth of mental torture.

6. Groupworks,term papers,lab reports, PCPs,online assessments,lecture handouts,handwritten notes etc. The cycle never ends and what started as a crowd thins out to a handful survivors.

7. Then come the clinicals and you shine in your ward rounds case presentation

8.Final year projects : you rack a brain for the topic, haggle with your supervisor, do your lab analysis,get the supervisor's approval after chaing them all over town for corrections.When you wind up that presentation:

9. When you take that oath and they name you Doctor,it feels like Hippocrates himself stamped your transcripts

10. Hats off, six long years pay off .Let the BA and BSc students take the power to read,I am good to go.

11. Certified drug lord! Wait, you thought it was over?Pre-internship exams wherever you go to practise in the world,internship then post-internship exams.You have got to make drugs,sell drugs and use drugs.

12. Now you are registered.Get with the program.There are strikes and go-slows,residencies,post-grad...it never ends.Viva la Pharmacie

THE BOOK AND THE BIBLE

I have this image of my ancestors duelling leopards and riding ostriches when the missionaries arrived. The Book and the Bible,two weapons wielded in an attempt to modernise the African and blind them to the colonists' robbery. The Lutherans,Catholics,Anglicans,Baptists,Quackers,Adventists carved out the Kenyan territory for spiritual conquest to preach water while their colonists drank wine. Maybe I too will board a Boeing in the future to show them how to fill up their fast emptying cathedrals;ad-dress their half-nakedness by sewing their ripped jeans,crop tops,beach shorts,bikinis etc.I could teach them how to dance and ban those lewd dances in their videos.😯
Look to the book and the Bible.As a pharmacist,I occasionally get promotional freebies as sationery or dinners.I have more brands in my bag than a shop shelf and if you met my relatives who share in my rewards,it won't take you long to guess they have a doc in the house. With the strain that is medical work, my thick skin sheds off fast and I run the risk off seeming unempathetic.When work pressures seem too much and my name is not on the Sunday rotor,I vent to God in church .My book for the notes and my Bible for the quotes.
One fine Sunday I picked the nearest notebook in a hurry and went to church. When the Minister of the word stepped on the podium- our vicar is a she, might I add- I positioned my book and Bible.My vicar is new to our parish so she has this fire to change things.She calls people out and has been seen to halt the service when the praise and worship team drags the tune.Once she gave a refresher course for all communicants who had just partaken in the communion because they were doing it all wrong. She is not some old matron with issues,just a woman who likes to keep the fire burning.
Here I am fervently penning the vicar's interpretation when I see her cough nervously.Did she just look at me?Noo, we are too many in ths crowd.She carries on and I am equally penning.Then she stops. Wololo!I know that pause and what follows it.Somebody is about to get it.
"Christians, when we come to church we should watch how we carry ourselves." Let me see...I came on time, wore my maxi.Not for me."Some of the things we do during the week stick with us when we think we have left them behind." Poor fellow.Then I see the little kids in front of me, those who play about the pews and have the courage of a thousand people in church.They giggle and one of them whispers,"Tabia mbaya(bad manners)." Ah, ah...something is wrong here.Before I can follow their gaze, their guardian comes to drag them back to her seat.But not before I catch her gape as she stares in my direction.Now what! I pretend to look at my phone when in reality I am using it as a mirror. No wardrobe or makeup blunders.The kids giggle behind me and one them runs up to the aisle to my seat. "Ndio hii kitabu ya tabia mbaya Auntie(This is the book with bad manners Auntie!)," I am finished!She is pointing to me and I realise that my notebook is the cause for drama.Just at the same time as everyone can read the caption in the photo below.It was a product for erectile dysfunction.In another audience it would have been a great question. It has been two weeks of no book with Bible.I ask myself every Sunday,"How long should self-imposed exile last?"

DOCTOR GOOGLE

She comes into the pharmacy with a diagnosis,prescription and a matter-of-fact highhandedness.Why did this know-it-all come today,of all the days, when I have a good number of clients waiting in line? I am stuck on Third Hand Music's Hellena singing at the background when I notice the large sheet of Web MD she's shaking furiously in my view.
"You gave me the wrong drugs,"she shouts loud enough to convince me money has been poured in her direction to finish my business.I strongly suspect that wannabe pharm tech who tells his clients pharmacists are not doctors.
"Madam,come into my office and we can clarify if ever you came to me before,"patience is always my last resort when that panic button is buzzing wild. She does not budge until I am forced to forego the urge to publicly plaster her with a genital warts diagnosis.Be still, the nobility of the pharmacy practice prevails. Miss X rambles on about how a visit to doctor Google a day after he collected a prescription from my pharmacy proved me wrong. She is not any better but all the more wiser.
"Did you complete the prescription?"
"No,how could when you are poisoning me," Miss X spits out. The psychology bit of my training recognizes an aggrieved patient who needs diffusion, the bomb kind and not the Fick's law kind.
"Google can tell you a lot of things but you have never seen it get a degree in anything,even honorary" I shut off for seconds, which is all I need to drive my point." Let me get this right.You keyed in a few symptoms ,it gave you possible diagnosis and a list of drugs.Did it see you, examine you,talk to you, poke around in your poop or sputum?"
She's dumbfounded,I got her good. Round two, gloves on."Do you think machines can be doctors? That machine cannot discern the difference between atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis unless it was a spelling error."Doctor Google will confirm I gave you that for this because there is no way this can cure this if there is bacterial resistance characteristic in this sphere of the medical practice."I knew I shut her up, won her over and impressed some of my clientelle. My advise to patients of Doctor Google,consult her like the dictionary.Once you have mastered the language,you only need a dictionary for Scrabble.Google is good for a second opinion,if you know where to look.

A CASE OF THE SICK DOCTOR

THE DANGER WITH DANGER
It’s Friday, TGIF and we all cannot wait for the lecturer to stop the blah blah. Then the craziness begins. We are only young so we have to live it up. We go on compensation mode for all the fun we have missed out. It’s compensation mode and a serious problem at that for all medicine students. The irony of finding a medical student guzzling down, puffing in and swallowing poisons beats logic- but aren’t we the worst patients after all? Why do we think as medics we have certain immunity to ignorance or arrogance? We know the dangers yet we dance with snake trying to charm it?
I met a female student who’d bleached herself white and her high-school classmates cannot help but wonder just what are we taught in our classes? Medicine is a noble profession, my lecturer always says. She reaffirms the point every time she has to address dressing code when we go to hospital. We are not lawyers to be given a dress code but that might soon have to change if the minis and micros start sneaking in front of our patient’s eyes. Yes, we have barely enough time to “get a life” but we are the life to millions of eager hearts out there. Yes, we might miss out on a lot but we will not miss out on everything. Someone’s prayer out there is you- a medic who lives according to the Hippocratic Oath and most of all, can protect themselves.