Welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast. Today I'm going to take a peek at beta blockers,

kind of talk about mechanism of action, what the medications are commonly used for, also get

into the weeds on some of the pearls between different agents and talk about kind of selectivity and non-selectivity as well.

So let's get into it.

So beta blockers are basically inhibit or block beta receptors in the body.

And when you think about beta receptors, you have to remember beta 1 and

beta 2. And the easiest way to remember that is beta 1 is you have one heart and beta 2 you have

two lungs. Now beta blockers are typically in most situations we're trying to block beta one receptors.

Beta blockers are most commonly used for hypertension and atrial fibrillation.

So we're using these to bring down blood pressure and also to kind of suppress the heart rate and relax the heart.

So by blocking beta receptors, the primary result that you're going to get is kind of reducing the

contractility of the heart and also kind of reducing the heart rate.

So that's usually the primary target.

Now, I will say there are agents that are more selective for beta ones and that action on the heart.

So a drug like metoprolol, for example, tends to be much more

selective. Atenol is a much more beta-1 selective agent. Now keep in mind as we raise the dose,

we can potentially start to lose that selectivity.

Beta 2, now I'll talk about this, certainly as we talk about other medications,

beta 2 agonists, which are drugs like albuterol, are used to stimulate respirations and to stimulate

breathing and open up the airways. So in a patient with respiratory difficulty, C-O-P-D, asthma, and patients being on beta 2 agonists,

we really want to try to avoid using a agent that's going to block beta 2 receptors.

And so an example of a more non-selective agent is propranol. That's kind of the

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