The Blood-Brain Barrier: The World's Pickiest Bouncer

Picture this: one night, you and your friends decide that you just want to get out and have some fun, so you drive down to the hottest club in town to see what the big fuss is about. When you get there, there's a huge line of people waiting and almost no one can get in. Of what seems like hundreds of people standing outside, the bouncer will only let about five in. Has anything like that ever happened to you? No? Me either, but that's beside the point. The club is your brain. The bouncer? That would be the blood-brain barrier. The poor saps  hanging outside in the rain are the countless chemicals, viruses, and other microscopic things trying to get to the brain.

Because the brain is so important to, well, everything we do, it only makes sense that the body would have developed an extremely effective defense mechanism to protect it from viruses and harmful bacteria. That mechanism is the blood-brain barrier. The barrier works by denying access to pretty much everything save for a select few things like small, uncharged molecules and molecules that dissolve in fats. The brain is basically feudal Japan. That being said, you can see how this might be a bit of an issue. As much as blocking out viruses and the like helps, the brain has a nasty habit of shutting out nutrients and other helpful things. This makes developing new medical treatments difficult as many treatments are unable to get past the barrier.

There are a few ways to penetrate the barrier, but none of them seem like anything I, or anyone else, should be willing to try. Things like radiation, hypertension, trauma, and infection have been found to break down the blood-brain barrier, but they're likely to cause more harm than good.

The blood-brain barrier is one of the more remarkable mechanisms we have that protects us. It's also one of the few bodily mechanisms that I've heard of people trying to bypass as opposed to improving, which makes it all the more interesting to me. It's funny to think that some parts of our bodies work against us just as much as they do for us. Maybe someone will find a way to penetrate the barrier without the risk of making the brain vulnerable. Wouldn't that be great? 

At any rate, it's time for me to skedaddle. 'Til next time...

That's the news, and I'm outta here.