Exercise might change brain chemistry, benefit cognition

Exercise might change brain chemistry, benefit cognition


It strengthens your heart, improves your mood and combats depression. It can help ward off disease, including some cancers. It boosts energy and makes it easier to fall asleep. Want to lose weight? It does that, too, to say nothing of its ability to lengthen life and decrease frailty.

Is this some magical new pill being cranked out by a pharmaceutical lab? Nah.

We’re talking about an aid to good health as old as humankind — exercise.

Science has shown again and again that physical activity might be the most-beneficial thing you can do to stay healthy. Exercise has even demonstrated benefits for the brain, including improving memory.

Now University of California scientists say older adults who stay physically active have brains that contain higher levels of a class of proteins that protect brain health. These proteins, the researchers say, help maintain the brain’s synapses, structures allowing our neurons to transmit electrical signals and communicate with each other.

As the study’s authors noted, the synapses are where cognition happens.

This isn’t the first study to point to the benefits of exercise in maintaining the brain’s health and staving off cognitive decline and diseases such as Alzheimer’s. But the mechanism has been something of a mystery. In this investigation, researchers tracked the activity of a group of older adults who agreed to donate their brains at death. Findings indicated that the more someone exercised, the higher the levels of these protective proteins in their brain.

It’s more evidence that exercise is the best medicine. That’s one prescription you can write for yourself.

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