When you take aspirin for a headache, how does it know to sail straight to your head and alleviate the pain?
The short answer is that it doesn’t. Molecules can’t transport themselves through the body and don’t have steering control over where they eventually end up.
When you swallow a tablet, it will initially dissolve in your stomach and intestines before the drug molecules are absorbed into your bloodstream.
Once in the blood, it can roam throughout the body to access different organs and tissues.
Drug molecules affect the body by binding to different cell receptors that can trigger a particular response. Drugs are designed to target specific receptors to reach their destinations and produce the desired effect.
But they can also bind to nontarget sites that potentially cause what is commonly known as “side effects.”
-by Promod Puri
(This post is compiled from an article in The Conversation)
Promod Puri.com 