Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, Eric Christensen.

Thank you all so much for listening today. To track me down is best probably on LinkedIn,

Eric Christensen, FarmD, BCGP, BCP, Bcps, also, real-life Pharmacology.com, definitely go subscribe.

You can get a free 31-page PDF, a great little study guide on the top 200 drugs for students,

young healthcare professionals, where I lay out the most important clinical pearls that you're

going to see likely on your pharmacology and board exams as well as in real

life. So go check that out for sure. Let's get into the drug of the day. Today I'm going to cover

diazepam, which is a benzodiazepine. The brand name of this medication is Valium.

And from a mechanism of action standpoint, this drug binds benzodiazepine receptors.

So that's real original, how they named those receptors.

Those receptors located in neurons.

And ultimately, that binding, that action can lead to an increase in the effects

of GABA now what's GABA GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter which can alter flow of

chloride ions to and from the cells.

And this can result in hyper-polarization,

and that can ultimately lead to a reduction in basically cell excitability.

So end result, reduced excitability of cells so we don't have action

potentials and basically transmission of signals through neurons, cross neurons in the brain

is most likely where this is going to have an impact.

So thinking about that,

we're trying to basically slow people down,

reduce excitability,

...