TV commercials, OTC medication labels, and even supplements almost universally say that they cannot be taken in combination with an MAOI. Even basic cold medications, decongestants, advil, and tylenol have this warning.
I’m sure there’s justification for everything, but it seems bizarre to me that something with such high interactivity would be taken by anyone. Would being on an MAOI prevent someone from receiving life saving medication in an emergency?
What is it about this class of medication that makes it need to be taken so exclusively? I’ve never heard of anything else remotely like it.
In: Biology
Disclaimer, I am not an expert just had a course on pharmakinetic stuff aged ago.
There are a lot of « monoamine » groups in a huge amount of drugs. Its a very simple pattern, basically just a single nitrogen atom.
A certain set of chemicals in your blood which is also responsible for regulating your heart beat happens to react rather readily with monoamines. Your body can deal with a few monoamines here and there thanks to the MAO it produces.
I guess what I’m trying to say is tons of things have monoamine groups in them, especially drugs, and monoamine containing things are bad for your heart, and you are preventing your body from being able to break those potentially dangerous monoamines.
This is opposed to something like an opioid inhibitor or a cannabinoid receptor or whatever; these things are more than just a single atom, and more like an entire molecular shape, and so very specific.
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