Some of you have heard the term Blood Brain Barrier, and of course, some have not.
But lets just say….you basically have a brick wall around your brain.
Gives another meaning to being hard headed.
HEYO.
I’m sorry.
Hey guys, Julia here for DNews
Your body is constantly in flux.
From eating, drinking, exercise, whatever, amino acids and hormones and other chemicals
in your body change in response.
For example, your blood sugar spikes after you eat a piece of cake.
But there’s one area that you’d want to remain relatively unchanged, your brain.
So there’s like a fortresses between the brain and the blood called the blood brain
barrier, or BBB.
So what is this thing?
Shout to Asmon Lacroix on twitter for asking us this very question!
#askdnews
The BBB surrounds blood vessels in the brain and central nervous system.
It locks down the brain and spinal cord fluid.
It lets the necessary molecules through and keeps the bad stuff out.
It’s made up of tightly knitted endothelial cells, enzymes and transporters.
Some people have described it as "a brick wall” around a vast majority of your brain.
Where each cell of the blood-brain barrier is a brick and the tight junctions between
them are the mortar."
The BBB allows small molecules like alcohol to squeeze through and the enzymes and transporters
allow essential nutrients like vitamin c and omega 3s to cross.
But large molecules and bacteria are kept out.
This whole system keeps what’s on the inside stable.
The brain needs specific microenvironments to function properly.
The brain’s communication system relies on chemical and electrical signalling between
neurons in a tightly controlled environment to function.
But conditions like inflammation and HIV can weaken the barrier.
If a bacteria or virus in the blood stream were to bypass the BBB and get in the brain,
it would get into the way of that kind of signalling and things would get thrown way
out of balance.
Brain infections are incredibly rare thanks to the BBB.
But that also means when someone does get one, it’s incredibly dangerous and hard
to treat.
While good at keeping out the bad stuff, the BBB is unfortunately good at keeping out the
good stuff too.
Like potentially life saving medicine.
According to the Royal Chemistry Society, over 95 per cent of drugs do not show useful
activity in the brain.
Those that do make their way into the brain are only for conditions like depression, schizophrenia,
and insomnia.
There are ways to bypass the BBB but it’s complicated and is basically neurosurgery.
Like an intracerebral implantation, which just like it sounds is an implant put directly
into the cerebrum.
But brain tissue is dense, so it’s hard for medicines to diffuse through the tissue.
So not ideal.
But there might be a way to tunnel through the brick wall with sound waves.
Which could help brain tumor patients.
Brain tumors are notoriously hard to treat or take out with surgery, especially a nasty
one like glioma.
They often leave roots behind.
And chemotherapy can’t cross the BBB, leaving few options for treatment.
So researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Canada did something no one else
has done before.
They opened up the BBB with sound waves to let chemo in.
Seriously, earlier research published in the journal Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology found
that tiny air bubbles injected into the blood stream could open up the BBB enough to let
the good stuff in.
They used low-intensity ultrasound waves to guide the bubbles to blood vessels near the
BBB.
These sound waves made the bubbles expand and contract and kind of vibrate.
This vibration jiggled open some of the junctions between cells in the BBB.
In the case of Sunnybrook research, once openings in the BBB were made, life-saving chemotherapy
could slip through and finally reach it’s target.
So our bodies are complicated and weird and mostly fighting FOR us.
But sometimes we have to work against it, to save lives.
Speaking of weird body things and blood things, ever wonder why we have different blood types?
There are a number of different blood types that a person can have, but what’s the difference
between them all?
Julian has the answer in this episode, right here
So do you have any other questions about how the body works?
Let us know down in the comments below or find us on facebook on twitter and don’t
forget to use the #AskDNews