Learnings

It's about 2 months into the semester, and I'm to have learned some stuff by this point. And learn I have.

Physiology
Learned how various stimuli from the environment becomes information that's sent to your brain. The recurring theme is that all stimuli eventually get converted to action potentials firing at the brain. The cool stuff is how all this happens: light, sound waves, smell, taste, and tactile sensations go through different mechanisms to become or cause other cells to fire APs. Cardiovascular and respiratory physiology involve more physics than I thought they would. The body has some pretty sweet ways of regulating these systems. The way by which the heart generates both its own pacemaker and contractile currents, also cool. Oo, and I know what those little squigglies on EKGs stand for now. Couldn't read any pathological EKGs, but I'm not focusing on that. Just starting renal physiology.

Endocrinology
Signalling cascades. Learn to love them. Er, tolerate them until memorized and then slowly forget them. There are lots of ways for hormones to affect receptors, and subsequently lots of ways for said binding to affect cells. The big picture is interesting though. The pituitary is pretty much the head honcho as far as hormones are concerned. It produces hormones which regulate other glands' hormonal production which then have local and/or systemic affects. Learned about common receptors and their immediate signalling cascades. Learned about how the pituitary itself is regulated and the hormones it produces. Learned about the male and female reproductive systems. Cool thing learned: as a developing embryo, if you're lacking two hormones, you develop a female reproductive tract. That is, we develop female parts by default. Similar situation with development of certain brain areas. Currently working through pregnancy lectures.

Even though these classes are only at an undergrad level, I'm still gaining greater appreciation for all the stuff that happens in our bodies, especially when we get down to the molecular level. I'm impressed by the regulatory mechanisms in place to keep things going. That and how, for the most part, none of it goes awry. The energy and time of thinking about all this stuff is definitely greater than that required for these processes to actually occur. AKA, during the time it took me to learn how the heart generates its different currents through various ion channels, my actual heart will have done it thousands of times.