I was talking about o. chem. yesterday in the office (because when graduate students get off topic, it's just switching to another area of academia, I think), but I really amazed by how many hormones have this "either one or the other, but not both" thing going on... ex. seretonin and norepineprhine; insulin and cortisol; adrenaline; insulin and glucagon; leptin and glucagon, etc. And then there's the whole limitation on hormonal creation because of the fundamental molecule-- ex. DHEA in relation to adrenaline and cortisol-- too much adrenaline is actually treated by increasing DHEA... even though adrenaline is synthesized from DHEA. Type 2 diabetes: too much insulin is treated with insulin injections-- under utilization treated effectively by supplementation. It defies "common logic" but it's in the fundamental nature of things.
What really makes me curious about this is that we look at many biological things as if they are going to have this asymptotic, "normal" function; I guess I'm thinking about marginal cost (thanks, Pericles! :) )or something here, but we might logically surmise, that the creation, for example, of too much insulin, will mean that each additional insulin will have a decreasing effectiveness... I guess the logic is that they would have an equal effect and just be bonding to a decreasing amount of available insulin receptors. The fact is, it's more discrete that that-- too much insulin, and you inhibit the functions of cortisol and glucagon making the effect of insulin-- more effective...
I learned that there are receptors in chloroplasts sensitive to wavelengths of red light-- if you have too many trees growing near one another, one of the reasons for distressed growth isn't a lack of light, but the fact that light reflected off of other trees is actually green and not red. So that the red light receptors are turned off, and the tree is not only harmed by the lack of direct red light from the sides, but from the additional effect of having its red light receptors turned off...
As a martial artist, I remember the best fighting tactic I learned was: whatever seems natural, do the opposite-- if you are being choked, move into the choke. If someone is punching you, step in past the punch and take a forearm to his throat, if someone tries to pull you down, fall. The oddest thing about this to me was that although typical fighting techniques seemed logical, the "atypical" fighting techniques actually agreed with the qigong/meridian theory-- it was as if we naturally have an atypical nature, but logically have a typical one---
I wonder if this is sort of a governing principle of all things: endocrinology, fighting, math, whatever: we are naturally inclined to be "one" or "the other" but not both-- trying to be marginally in "two worlds" results in failure to be in either one. Evolution is crazy like that, I guess. Maybe that's something philosophical there, too. I don't know. I guess I'll read this later and think either, "wow, that's dumb," or "wow, that's brilliant." And there's another duality for you: I don't think I'll read it and say, "well, that was about 40% okay."
I guess the long and short of it is that some stuff just can't be both.
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