Posts Tagged ‘types of addictions’
Addiction and Dependency Relation
Addiction is a state that an individual comes in different ways. The phenomena that are linked are tolerance, withdrawal dependence and sensitization. Tolerance refers to the reduction of the effects caused by drugs. In alcohol, for example, over the years of abuse by a person, the effects diminish, reaching the individual tolerance of the substance. This can also happen with the euphoric effect caused by the consumption of cocaine.
Tolerance is directly linked to the withdrawal. This state, which alcohol can occur in mild, moderate or severe, calling this state Delirium Tremens. The slowdown in consumption, both alcohol and any other substance, generated by the withdrawal, according to each drug.
Cocaine change the way genes function in the brain
Prolonged exposure to cocaine can cause permanent changes in how genes are turned on and off in the brain, a finding that could develop more effective treatments for many types of addictions.
A mouse study conducted by the team of Ian Maze, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, found that chronic cocaine addiction prevented a specific enzyme to carry out its work of elimination of some genes in the brain’s pleasure circuits.
This effect was eager than rodents more drugs.
The research helps explain how cocaine use changes the brain, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study published in the journal Science.
“This discovery is enabling a new understanding of how the repeated use of drugs in the long term modifies the function of neurons,” Volkow said in a telephone interview. Read the rest of this entry »