on being a belladonna

Nary a suitor gazing into my pallid blue eyes has failed to notice the enormity of my pupils. I spend my days with permanently dilated pupils; I'm your pseudo-strung out medical student. I've always rued this fact of my physiology, as I'd prefer to show off more blue iris.

Turns out, I'm one sexy lady; pretty women all the way back to Cleopatra have used to apply atropine to their eyes in order to dilate their own pupils. (if I could code captions, I'd say something about the exceedingly dilated pupils in this bust of Cleopatra. My pupils are not quite so large as to take up my entire eyeball.)

Thanks to Pharmacology, I've learned that atropine is a competitive inhibitor of the ligand-gated muscarinic acetylcholine receptor. By applying it to their eyes, the Bella Donna blocked the effects of acetylcholine (Ach) on the parasympathetic nervous system, which acts to constrict the pupil. When atropine is around, Ach can't bind to its muscarinic Ach receptor in the neuromuscular junction, and so the receptor can't open its sodium channal and depolarize the post-synaptic cell. So the sympathetic nervous system goes unopposed: pupils are dilated.

And in earth-shattering news, my Marion Barry is still using crack to achieve the same effect.


I'm listening to:
Fiona Apple- Extraordinary Machine
the new version has grown on me. And Parting Gift has recently become one of my favorite Fiona songs ever, believe it or not; I can't believe I missed its greatness for so long. The lyrics are perfect (though to make it more personally relevant, I've replaced "you never learned that much from me" with "you never once enchanted me.") The song also makes me want to do plie exercises at a barre, and I can't tell you the last time that sounded like a good idea.