Category: Family Health

Can Exercise Keep Your Brain Healthier?

We’ve all heard that exercise is good for us. Experts recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week. This can include brisk walking, biking, playing tennis, or even pushing a lawnmower. Strength training exercises, like lifting weights, push-ups, or sit-ups, are recommended at least two days a week.

Many benefits of exercise are well-known. Aerobic exercise can help you maintain a healthy weight by burning fat. It can also keep your heart healthy. Strength training can help to build muscle mass and strengthen your bones. Stretching can improve flexibility and range of motion. And balance exercises can prevent falls. Scientists are finding out that exercise may also improve our brain health.

Research has shown that when you exercise, many different molecules are released into your bloodstream. These molecules travel to different organs and tissues, where they trigger changes that help your cells withstand the physical stress of exercise.

“You’re basically telling your body, ‘You need to prepare for something,’” explains Dr. Saul Villeda, who studies the aging brain at the University of California, San Francisco. In
preparing to withstand exercise, cells also seem to get better at withstanding the effects of aging.

As we age, our Related to the ability to think, learn, and remember.
cognitive abilities often start to decline. We may have difficulty with learning and memory. That’s because our brains undergo cellular changes as we get older. The protective barrier around the brain also changes, altering which substances can get into your brain. Some of these have potentially harmful effects.

Studies in mice and rats have shown that exercise can partially offset these changes. And it can prevent at least some of the cognitive decline that occurs with age. These benefits haven’t just been seen in mice, either. Research has also shown a link between aerobic exercise and better memory in people.

Certain exercise-induced molecules have been shown to boost cognitive functions in mice. Villeda and colleagues are studying one called GPLD1. They’ve found that it’s at least partly responsible for why exercise improves new brain cell formation, learning, and memory in aged mice.

Villeda’s team has also shown that more active older adults have more GPLD1 in their blood. This suggests that GPLD1 may have a similar function in people. GPLD1 production has shown effects similar to exercise in the brains of mice. So, Villeda hopes that one day GPLD1 can help improve the health of people who aren’t able to exercise.

Don’t be discouraged if the recommended amount of exercise seems overwhelming. It’s okay to start small. “A little bit goes a long way,” Villeda says. “Even just moving a few minutes extra that you wouldn’t have done already has a benefit.” He notes that his research findings have motivated him to start exercising, which he didn’t do before. “Even though I’m dealing with mice, the benefits that I can physically see in them have compelled a couch potato [like me] to actually get up and start exercising.”

See the Wise Choices box for tips on getting exercise in your day.

Experts recommend that kids eat no added sugars before age 2. Yet most kids are exposed to added sugars at a very early age, even before birth through their mother’s bloodstream.

Scientists studied the long-term health effects of sugar exposure in the womb and early childhood. To do this, they looked at the health of adults in the United Kingdom who were conceived or born around the end of sugar rationing. The rationing had begun during World War II. The amount of sugar allowed for each person was within today’s U.S. dietary guidelines. After rationing ended, sugar intake nearly doubled.

The researchers looked at data from more than 60,000 people born in the U.K. between October 1951 and March 1956. Those born before July 1954 likely had reduced exposure to sugar due to rationing. Those born in July 1954 and later didn’t experience sugar rationing. As a result, they were born into a more sugar-rich environment.

Kids exposed to less sugar early in life had a lower chance of getting diabetes or high blood pressure decades later. Health benefits increased with longer exposure to rationing. For those with reduced sugar exposure for at least 19 months after birth, the risk of getting diabetes dropped by about 35%. The risk of high blood pressure dropped by about 20%.

“It is hard to find situations where people are randomly exposed to different nutritional environments early in life, and follow them for 50 to 60 years,” says Dr. Tadeja Gracner of the University of Southern California, who led the study. “The end of rationing provided us with a novel natural experiment to overcome some of these challenges.”