Gretchen Reynolds, estimable health writer for the New York Times, reports on some interesting research that suggests that exercise can make us a little sharper, especially if we are mice. The research, conducted largely at the University of California, San Francisco, infused blood from mice that exercised regularly into mice that were sedentary, as well as elderly, then gave the elderly sedentary mice some tests of cognitive ability. What happened? The aged mice “performed better on cognitive tests than equally elderly controls,” Reynolds writes. “They also showed spikes in the creation of new neurons in their brains’ memory centers.’
There’s more the story: The researchers then looked long and hard at the proteins in the blood of exercising mice, and found elevated levels of a protein called GPLD1. Next up: humans. When the researchers did the same protein search on older men and women, some of whom exercised, some who didn’t, they found the same elevated levels of GPLD1 in the exercisers. OK, at this point, the researchers don’t know how GPLD1 changes the brain, especially because that protein is unlikely to make through the blood/brain barrier, but they have a theory. The think it may “incite alterations in other tissues and cells elsewhere in the body. These tissues, in turn, produce yet more proteins that have effects on other tissues that eventually lead to direct changes to the neurotransmitters, genes and cells in the brain itself that undergird cognitive improvements.”
Think about that, while exercising.
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