What you should really be doing to protect yourself against Alzheimer’s… Here’s the real way to keep your brain sharp and Alzheimer’s at bay
Six minutes of high-intensity exercise may lengthen the lifetime of a healthy brain and prevent the development of neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
A new study published in The Journal of Physiology demonstrates that a short but intensive bout of cycling stimulates the synthesis of a specialized protein that is crucial for brain development, learning, and memory, and may protect the brain against age-related cognitive decline.
This exercise insight is part of the quest to create accessible, equitable, and economical non-pharmacological methods to good aging that anybody may use.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a specialized protein, encourages neuroplasticity (the capacity of the brain to develop new connections and pathways), as well as the survival of neurons.
According to research conducted on animals, BDNF availability increases memory formation and storage, improves learning, and generally improves cognitive function.
BDNF’s obvious neuroprotective characteristics and crucial functions have piqued the curiosity of the aging research community.
Although BDNF has shown a lot of promise in animal models, pharmacological therapies have so far been unable to effectively harness its protective abilities in people.
“We saw the need to explore non-pharmacological approaches that can preserve the brain’s capacity which humans can use to naturally increase BDNF to help with healthy ageing,” adds Lead author Travis Gibbons.
Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand evaluated the following conditions to investigate the independent and interaction effects of fasting and exercise on BDNF production:
- 20-hour fasting,
- Light exercise (90 minutes of cycling at a low intensity),
- High-intensity exercise (six minutes of cycling at a fast pace), Fasting and exercise together.
When they compared one day of fasting with or without a long session of light exercise, they found that short but intense exercise was the best way to boost BDNF.
BDNF went up by four to five times, from 396 pg L-1 to 1170 pg L-1, compared to when the person was fasting (when the level of BDNF didn’t change) or when they were active for a long time (slight increase in BDNF concentration, 336 pg L-1 to 390 pg L-1).
More study is required to understand the processes behind these differences.
One theory has to do with the cerebral substrate switch and glucose metabolism, which is the main source of energy for the brain.
The cerebral substrate switch occurs when the brain moves from one preferred fuel source to another in order to meet the body’s energy requirements, such as when lactate is metabolized during exercise instead of glucose.
When the brain switches from ingesting glucose to lactate, several pathways are set off, which raise the blood levels of BDNF.
The increased quantity of platelets, the smallest blood cell, which are known to contain high quantities of BDNF, may be the cause of the BDNF rise that has been reported after exercise.
Exercise has a 20% greater impact on the concentration of platelets in the blood than fasting.
The research included 12 physically active individuals (six men and six women, ages 18 to 56). The equal number of male and female participants wasn’t meant to show sex differences, but rather to give a better picture of the population as a whole.
Calorie restriction and exercise have been shown to have positive impacts on cognitive function, although further study is needed to determine the relative importance of the two factors.
We are now studying how fasting for longer durations, for example up to three days, influences BDNF. We are curious whether exercising hard at the start of a fast accelerates the beneficial effects of fasting. Fasting and exercise are rarely studied together. We think fasting and exercise can be used in conjunction to optimise BDNF production in the human brain,” adds Travis Gibbons.
Source:10.1113/JP283582
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