Hey all, welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, Eric Christensen.

And on today's episode, I'm going to cover benzodiazepine pharmacology.

Now, as I went through my list of medications I've covered, it surprised me that I haven't covered benzodiazepines yet.

They are definitely used in geriatrics,

and you certainly see them in multiple other settings as well. So for those of you maybe that

don't know or learning benzodiazepines, some common ones that are actually seen, that I actually

seen pretty regularly

in clinical practice.

El Prasalam, that's brand name Xanax, Larazepam, which is Ativan, Klonazepam, Klonopin,

Tamazepam, Restoril, sometimes, not quite as much, probably, as some of the others mentioned

there.

And then occasionally diazepam as well, and that brand name is Valium. So these drugs work to enhance the effect of

GABA. And GABA is one of those inhibitory type neurotransmitters.

It does not cause, or excuse me, it kind of settles down those neurons.

And with that, you can kind of think of it in context of, you know, what this medication is going to

treat in that if we're going to settle down that patient, you can think of anxiety, you can think

of anxiety, insomnia, and that's, you know, primarily what I see benzodiazepines used for.

Kind of finishing up on that mechanism of action, how it actually does it,

it actually causes chloride ions to go into those neuronal cells,

and this causes a state of hyper-polarization,

which essentially makes the neurons less likely to fire and precipitate an inaction potential.

So that kind of rounds out the mechanism and a little bit behind it as to why it's used for, you know, certain indications and why it makes sense.

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