Does this mean it reduces serotonin and dopamine, or increases them? Wikipedia says an agonist, “is a chemical that activates a receptor to produce a biological response.” But that doesn’t answer my question. I’m not a scientist or medical person. (“Biology” flair because that seems closest…)
In: Biology
Your body has receptors that are meant to bind with specific chemicals, which produce various effects depending on the receptor. An agonist is a molecule similar enough to what the receptor is expecting that it will bind to and activate it. An antagonist will bind, but does not activate it. In some cases, molecules will bind to a receptor better than what it wanted; caffeine is a good example. When you get tired, there’s a buildup of the chemical adenosine, which has its own receptor. The more of these receptors that get filled up with adenosine, the sleepier you are. Caffeine is a strong antagonist; it binds to the adenosine receptors more readily than adenosine itself (but doesn’t cause an effect). The result is you don’t feel tired when you should, depending on when you drank the coffee/tea, because the caffeine is clogging up the receptors and they won’t “see” all the adenosine until caffeine is expelled and you crash.
If something is a serotonin agonist, it means that it will bind to the same receptors natural serotonin would bind to, and produce *some* kind of effect. Famous serotonergic drugs include classical psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, which bind to the 5-HT2A serotonin receptors, among others, to produce hallucinations and the like.
That being said, to answer the question “does this mean it reduces serotonin and dopamine, or increases them,” it would do neither. The compound in ginger would just bind to one of the receptors it fits. From your reply to another comment, it seems like its acting more like an antagonist, if it is inhibiting the action of natural serotonin much the same way caffeine inhibits the adenosine
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