BODY FLUIDS

Answer the ff. questions:

1. Is the blood–brain barrier permeable to insulin? Explain.
- Yes. With the use of saturable transporter, insulin crosses the blood-brain
barrier. The delivery of plasma insulin into the central nervous system is
saturable and it is facilitated by an insulin-receptor mediated process.
These all happens in the brain endothelial cells, this contains the
transporter that translocates insulin from blood to brain, which is also
regulated by insulin.
2. Caffeine is a diuretic. What effect will drinking a lot of coffee have
on the specific gravity of your urine?
- Coffee contains caffeine which is a diuretic, drinking a lot of coffee will
results in increase in frequency of urination. Most of diuretics help your
kidneys release more sodium into the urine and it also has a direct effect
on the bladder’s smooth muscle in a way that it causes an involuntary
bladder contraction. The effects of caffeine (High sodium level) makes the
urine more concentrated and because of this, the specific gravity of your
urine increases.
3. What happens to the oxygen-carrying capacity of hemoglobin when
the pH is lowered? What is the name of this effect?
- As the pH decreases, the oxygen-carrying capacity of hemoglobin also
decreases. When the pH decreases, hemoglobin picks up hydrogen ions
and this makes its affinity to oxygen decreases. All of this happens when
there is an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) which makes the pH in blood
to decrease. This effect is called The Bohr Effect, which comes from the
Danish physiologist Christian Bohr in 1904.