Why do our bodies build up a tolerance to some medications but not others?
In: Biology
It’s kinda hard without specifics, but it has to do with upregulation of receptors a lot of the time.
Imagine you’re delivering goods to a factory. The first delivery, they send two guys to unload a whole truck, and it ends up taking hours. The factory learns their lesson and sends two extra guys the next time, so it takes half the time. You keep making the deliveries until the factory sends out so many guys that a few of them are just standing around while everyone else grabs one box each.
The factory is your cell (basic building block of you) and the workers are receptors (the bits on the cell that uptake/respond to meds).
Some drugs target cells in a way that doesn’t cause them to send out more receptors, while others can reach saturation/oversaturation quickly so your cell doesn’t respond as strongly/for as long.
Edit: this model might be a little backwards for the drugs people are picturing. The opposite version of this is if the boxes are heavy and the workers start slacking off (downregulation) and don’t engage as much. After revising a few things, the model I suggested originally is one of up-regulation and doesn’t quite fit the question. Hopefully it helps some of you understand/visualise cell receptors a little better, and also hammer home that this is a complex subject.
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