It is a well known fact that exercise and mental health are intertwined. When you get sweaty, you’re improving your mood, increase your self-esteem, Y improve your memory and concentration. Now, there’s a new reason to break a sweat: Research from the Center for Memory and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco, indicates that movement may also play an important role in protecting our brains against dementia as we age .
Published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, the study confirmed that exercise has a protective effect in the human brain, especially in old age. Scientists have long noted this benefit of exercise. in mice test subjects before, but discovering the same relationship between movement and cognitive longevity in the human brain is a great scientific milestone. The minds at UC-San Francisco discovered this connection between exercise and the brain by studying people who donated their brains to scientific research as part of the Memory and Aging Project at Chicago Rush University. The brains studied belonged to people who were between 70 and 80 years old at the time of their death.
That’s how they found out. A healthy brain is one that transmits electrical signals effortlessly through the synapses in our brain. You can think of synapses as little gates between neurons that let signals through, and proteins are essential for the maintenance of these little gates. “There are many proteins present at the synapse that help facilitate different aspects of cell-to-cell communication. Those proteins must be in balance with each other for the synapse to function optimally,” writes the study’s author. Dr. Kaitlin Casaletto.
As part of their research, Dr. Casaletto’s team looked at the level of physical activity study participants had before they died and found that those who exercised more tended to have more of these protective proteins in their brains. “We found that higher levels of daily physical activity in older adults are associated with higher levels of these synaptic proteins in brain tissue at autopsy,” says Dr. Casaletto. well+well. “These are correlative, so we don’t know the directionality, but it does suggest that physical activity may promote the maintenance of these protein levels even at older ages.”
“These findings begin to support the dynamic nature of the brain in response to our activities and the ability of the elderly brain to generate healthy responses to activity, again, even at older ages.” —Kaitlin Casaletto, PhD
In short, this means that the more someone exercises, the more protective proteins develop in their brain, regardless of whether the person breaking out in a sweat already has markers of Alzheimer’s or dementia. “These findings begin to support the dynamic nature of the brain in response to our activities and the ability of the aging brain to generate healthy responses to activity, again, even at older ages. We also found fairly linear relationships, meaning that how much more physical activity, the higher the levels of synaptic protein in brain tissue,” says Dr. Casaletto, adding that she recommends aiming for about 150 minutes a week of physical activity.
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So the next time you work out, be sure to dedicate a mile, burpee, or crunch to those little proteins in your brain. they are doing a whole to much to you
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