Your brain is who you are. Your brain makes your personality, your character, your ability to be happy and enjoy life, your emotions, your ability to learn and how quickly or slowly, your daily actions and reactions, how and what interests you, all of these and much more. Your brain’s health is essential to your well-being. Duly, your brain is well protected: it is the only organ almost completely surrounded by bone: the skull. No other organ is so guarded: not the heart, nor the kidneys, nor the liver. The weight of the brain is approximately 3 pounds, or about 2% of our body weight, yet consumes 30% of our glucose and 20% of our calories. There are 400 miles of blood vessels, mainly capillaries, to bring oxygen and nutrients to the 100 billion neurons that make up the brain.^1,2 Each neuron has 1,000 synaptic connections. The visual cortex has 12,000 connections per neuron, and the prefrontal cortex, 80,000 synapses per neuron. This part of the brain is where executive functions take place, where we decide our long-term goals, plan for the future, develop our personality expressions and our social behavior, and control of certain parts of speech. It is where we determine between good and bad, future consequences of what we are currently doing.^2-8 This part of the brain is missing in many politicians.

One of the most vital parts of the brain is the blood-brain barrier (BBB). It is a highly specialized brain endothelial structure. The BBB separates components of the blood from neurons. The BBB limits the entry of plasma components, red blood cells, and leukocytes into the brain. Approximately 98% of small molecule drugs and all large molecule neurotherapeutics, e.g., recombinant peptides, proteins, are normally excluded from the brain. The intact BBB is a major obstacle for the development of pharmaceutical drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders².