Whar are Neuropeptides?
What are neuropeptides and how can they help your body?
Contined from main page....
As you can likely tell, Neuropeptide and polypeptide sound fairly similiar, the difference is that neuropeptides are specific messengers that deal with specific purposes while the polypeptides are somewhat a larger group that are not so specific.
"Peptide" appears to be the "IT" word in antiaging skin creams nowadays.
A peptide is merely a small protein comprised of amino acids. It doesn't take a lot of Peptides to be effective and , are highly specific and have a very good safety profile when used physiologically - that is, to assist or manipulate an organism's physical processes. If we dismember some of the peptide labels above, we can begin to discriminate among them.
Again, peptides are proteins, and proteins are made up of amino acids. So when you hear words like amino-polypeptide, you can guess that the two words used together is rather redundant.
If you look at the pretense of the word "poly-peptide" it just means that this particular peptide made up of many amino acids. If you have ever wondered what a Hexapeptide is, it is nothing more than a chain of amino acids. And of course, penta means five, for those wondering about pentaoeotide.
Neuropeptide is a better term because it does more to describe the function of the peptide. Neuropeptides serve as neuromodulators, neurotransmitters, neurohormones, and hormones.
As mentioned above, research has gained so much momentum in neuropeptides that a scientific journal has been created to release original research and findings. Peer reviewed studies dealing in structure, actions, functions, and distributions of peptides through out the body.
The amazing thing about neuropeptides is how powerful they are. Look at the bodies other neurotransmitters. They do nothing more than transmit signals along the central nervous system from A to B. Neuropeptides transmit omnidirectionally outward and can even direct transmissions in reverse. As neuromodulators, they can activate and deactivate other neurotransmitters. It's an astounding process that our bodies do all the time.