The evidence could not be clearer. Get up. Put on your workout clothes and running shoes and run. Just run. Have fun but run. Run for fun. Count the miles. Do this every morning. Track your progress. Find out your improvements by week's end. Just do it.
Because we can never have enough
reasons to keep exercising, a new study with mice finds that physical activity
not only increases the number of new neurons in the brain, it also subtly
changes the shape and workings of these cells in ways that might have
implications for memory and even delaying the onset of dementia.
This is good. Increasing the number of new neurons in the brain is a good thing.
As most of us have heard, our
brains are not composed of static, unchanging tissue. Instead, in most animals,
including people, the brain is a dynamic, active organ in which new neurons and
neural connections are created throughout life, especially in areas of the
brain related to memory and thinking.
The brain is dynamic only if you're dynamic. Get up. Off your duff. And get on with a dynamic, energizing day.
Okay, this next point, if true, is amazing . . .
This process of creating new
neurons, called neurogenesis, can be altered by lifestyle, including physical
activity. Many past studies have shown that in laboratory rodents, exercise
doubles or even triples the number of new cells produced in adult animals’
brains compared to the brains of animals that are sedentary.
"Exercise doubles . . . even triples the number of new cells produced in adult animals' brains compared to the brains of animals that are sedentary." So, what's the message? Don't settle. Incorporate this in your day. I love this statement,
But it has not been clear whether
the new brain cells in active animals are somehow different from comparable new
neurons in inactive animals or if they are just more numerous.
At least one difference between active and sedentary folks is that you'll have more brain cells! Could there be a stronger indictment for folks sitting around? If I had my druthers, I would be up and at 'em all day from running to swimming to hiking. That is if I had my druthers.
That question has long interested
scientists at the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, who have been examining how running alters the brains and behavior of
lab animals.
Last year, in an important
study published in NeuroImage, the researchers found for the first
time that young brain cells in adult mice that spent a month with running
wheels in their cages did seem to be different from those in animals that did
not run. For the experiment, the scientists injected a modified rabies vaccine
into the animals, where it entered the nervous system and brain. They then
tracked and labeled connections between brain cells and learned that compared
to the sedentary animals’ brain cells, the runners’ newborn neurons had more
and longer dendrites, the snaky tendrils that help to connect the cells into
the neural communications network. They also found that more of these
connections led to portions of the brain that are important for spatial memory,
which is our internal map of where we have been and how we got there.
Interesting. So the new neurons had more and longer dendrites that build neuronal communication.
Okay, so these results don't occur until after 1 month.
This type of memory is often
diminished in the early stages of dementia.
But these findings, while
intriguing, involved animals that had been running for a month, which is the
equivalent of years of physical activity by people. The researchers wondered
whether such changes in neurons and connections might actually begin earlier
and maybe almost immediately after the animals began to exercise.
Runners' brains teemed with far more new neurons than your aunt or uncle who prefers watching the morning news hours.
So for the new
study, which was published last month in Scientific Reports, most of
the same researchers gathered a group of adult, male mice. (Males were used to
avoid accounting for the effects of the female reproductive cycle.) The animals
were injected with a substance that marks newborn neurons. Half were then
allowed to run for a week on wheels in their cages, while the others remained
inactive. Afterward, some were also injected with the modified rabies vaccine
to track new synapses and connections between the neurons.
When the scientists then
microscopically examined brain tissue, they found that the runners’ brains, as
expected, teemed with far more new neurons than did the brains of the sedentary
animals, even though the runners had been exercising for only a week.
Running makes your brain cells larger and more mature.
Interestingly, these neurons also
looked unique. They were larger and, as in the study of mice that ran for a
month, displayed more and longer dendrites than similar neurons in the other
animals. In effect, the young neurons in the runners’ brains appeared to be
more mature after only a week of exercise than brain cells from inactive
animals.
These young cells were better
integrated into the overall brain circuitry, too, with more connections into
portions of the brain involved in spatial and other types of memory. Most
surprising to the scientists, these cells also proved to be less easily activated
by neurochemical messages to fire rapidly, which is usually a hallmark of more
mature neurons. They remained calmer and less prone to excitability than new
neurons in the inactive animals’ brains.
So, wait, what does this mean, "neither [study looked] into whether the running mice thought and remembered differently than mice that were sedentary for most of the day"? Does this mean that the shape and form were impressive, but the function of these nerves, at least in terms of how they execute learning or memory or other cognitive function, were not determined from this study? It appears so.
What these differences in cell
structure and connection mean for brain function remains uncertain, though,
says Henriette van Praag, a principal investigator at the National Institutes
of Health and senior author of this and the earlier study. Neither study was
designed to look into whether the running mice thought and remembered
differently than mice that were sedentary for most of the day.
So it's just a matter of the study being "more evidence" that brain cells are more numerous but with functionality are more, what, vigorous or efficient?
But the current study “provides
more pieces of evidence that brain cells produced under running conditions are
not just quantitatively but qualitatively different” than other neurons, she
says, “and these differences are evident very soon” after exercise begins.
Well, now this is hopeful. Folks with brain injuries can expect these exercised brain cells to "integrate into and bulk up portions of the brain . . . associated with memory loss and dementia."
Perhaps most important, the new
brain cells in the runners tended to integrate into and bulk up portions of the
brain that, if damaged by disease, are associated with early memory loss and
dementia, she adds.
Oh, but because we're people and the study was done on mice, then the conclusions, all the fanfare or being "BREAKING NEWS" still only lives in the world of theory.
Of course, this experiment used
mice, which are not people. While some past neurological studies with people
have hinted that exercise might alter our brain structure in similar ways, she
says, that possibility is still theoretical.
Still, she says, “I think it is a
very good idea for the sake of the brain to be moving and active.”
I think it's safe to say that running, walking, swimming, hiking, biking, yoga and others are going to build your brain.
And don't forget the benefits of Benfotiamine to enhance your efforts.
