office_hours:series:start

== Office Hours: Series == is where pharmacology is reconciled.

These sessions step back from individual drugs and focus on:

Pain is a signal — but it is also an experience.
This series breaks pain into its components: nociception, transmission, modulation, and central amplification. We will differentiate acute inflammatory pain from neuropathic pain and centralized pain, and explain why each responds differently to medications.
Instead of asking “what drug do I give?”, you’ll start asking “where in the pathway is the dysfunction?”

Most pharmacology ultimately modifies the inflammatory cascade.

This series connects:

Inflammation is the body’s protective response — until it isn’t.
This series maps the immune cascade from tissue injury to cytokine signaling. You’ll see how histamine, prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and interleukins connect — and how medications intervene at different depths of the pathway.
Understanding the cascade allows you to predict both therapeutic effects and immunologic risk.

Migraine is not “just a bad headache.”
It is a neurologic disorder involving cortical excitability, trigeminovascular activation, and inflammatory neuropeptides like CGRP. This series explores how those pathways produce aura, photophobia, nausea, and pain — and how targeted therapies interrupt them.
You will move from symptom recognition to mechanism-driven treatment decisions.

Obesity is not simply about excess weight — it is about dysregulated energy signaling.
This series examines how the brain, gut hormones, adipose tissue, insulin, and reward pathways interact to regulate body weight. We will unpack why long-term weight loss is biologically difficult, why set points matter, and how modern pharmacology changes the equation.
By the end, you will understand obesity as a chronic metabolic disease — not a lifestyle choice.

One of the most common questions you’ll hear in clinic is: “What vitamins should I take?” If you don’t understand what they actually do, you can’t give a meaningful answer.
This series is designed to move beyond memorizing deficiency lists and instead understand how vitamins and minerals function at a biochemical and physiologic level.
Most medical curricula barely scratch the surface of micronutrient physiology. This series fills that gap by building a clear framework — from mechanism to clinical application.