Best Exercise for Brains

I’m brain-damaged. 

This will come to no surprise to many of you who read this blog. As a result of my initial surgery, follow-up surgeries and treatments, my brain performance was, well, worse than pre-brain tumor.

As a result, I’m continually looking for ways to improve my thought process, my brain power and my ability to cogitate (assuming these are all different things).

So, you shouldn’t be surprised that I am keenly interested in a recent article entitled “Which Type of Exercise Is Best for the Brain?” written by the wonderful Gretchen Reynolds: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/02/17/which-type-of-exercise-is-best-for-the-brain/  

The article reprises research conducted by researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland which studied the impact of different kinds of exercise on the brains of mice. Here’s what I believe to be the most revealing quote of the article: “Those rats that had jogged on wheels showed robust levels of neurogenesis. Their hippocampal tissue teemed with new neurons, far more than in the brains of the sedentary animals. The greater the distance that a runner had covered during the experiment, the more new cells its brain now contained.”

Reynolds goes on to write that “Obviously, rats are not people. But the implications of these findings are provocative. They suggest, said Miriam Nokia, a research fellow at the University of Jyvaskyla who led the study, that ‘sustained aerobic exercise might be most beneficial for brain health also in humans.’”

Before you start training for a marathon, however, I suggest that you read her entire article.

And here’s a link to the abstract in the “The Journal of Physiology” - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP271552/abstract

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“Breaching the blood brain barrier to improve treatment of brain tumors”

This is the headline of an article I just read posted on Technology.org: http://www.technology.org/2014/01/21/breaching-blood-brain-barrier-improve-treatment-brain-tumors/

The first sentence nicely summarizes my (previous) understanding of the blood-brain barrier: “The effectiveness of most cancer treatments targeting the central nervous system (CNS) has been limited due to body’s own defenses, particularly the blood brain barrier, which is difficult to breach for most conventional therapies.”

Gretchen Reynold’s in her thoughtful book, The First 20 Minutes, explained the “blood-brain” issue so simply and eloquently I felt like this was an insurmountable barrier.

Well it was…until the brainiacs (i.e. scientists) at University of Chicago “…showed that intranasal administration of stem cell-based therapeutics may be effective in breaching the blood brain barrier and treating gliomas – the most common type of brain tumor – in mice.”

Ok, this is mice not people so I’m not jumping up and down just yet. 

But the article says that “This findings suggest that this method may be effective for treating medulloblastomas and other cerebellar tumors, which are particularly common in children.”

When they figure that out, I will be jumping up and down.

John

PS – if you are a brainiac yourself, here’s a link to the abstract in the journal of Molecular Therapy http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/vaop/naam/abs/mt2013199a.html

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“How Inactivity Changes the Brain” or “This Is Your Brain on the Couch”

The wonderful Ms. Gretchen Reynolds, who writes the Well blog for the NY Times, has just reported on a provocative piece of research for those of us who are worried about our brains, be they damaged, injured or aging just too damn fast.

Her article, entitled How Inactivity Changes the Brain, starts off saying “A number of studies have shown that exercise can remodel the brain by prompting the creation of new brain cells and inducing other changes. Now it appears that inactivity, too, can remodel the brain, according to a notable new report”

And, guess what? In activity doesn’t improve brain performance.

She goes on to write that “The study, which was conducted in rats but likely has implications for people too, the researchers say, found that being sedentary changes the shape of certain neurons in ways that significantly affect not just the brain but the heart as well. The findings may help to explain, in part, why a sedentary lifestyle is so bad for us.”

Interested? Worried? Want to know why your sedentary lifestyle is so bad for you? Go to this link: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/how-inactivity-changes-the-brain/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

This following quote from Patrick Mueller, an associate professor of physiology at Wayne State University who oversaw the new study, is now etched into my brain: “In upcoming presentations, Dr. Mueller said, he plans to show slides of the different rat neurons and, echoing the old anti-drug message, point out that In upcoming presentations, Dr. Mueller said, he plans to show slides of the different rat neurons and, echoing the old anti-drug message, point out that “‘this is your brain.’ And this is your brain on the couch.”

If you're particularly active, a science major or like reading dense scientific reports, here's a link to the abstract, entitled Physical (in)activity-dependent structural plasticity in bulbospinal catecholaminergic neurons of rat rostral ventrolateral medulla published in The Journal of Comparative Neurology http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24114875

John

PS - And if you find a way to work the words “bulbospinal catecholaminergic neurons” into a conversation over lunch today, give yourself a gold star.

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Regular Exercise = Better Memory

One of my favorite health and fitness writers, the effervescent Ms. Gretchen Reynolds, has recently written a new article about two new studies that delve into the link between exercise and improved cognition.

The article, entitled Getting a Brain Boost through Exercise -http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/how-exercise-may-boost-the-brain/?ll_leid=224&refer=5821  - reports that “Two new experiments, one involving people and the other animals, suggest that regular exercise can substantially improve memory, although different types of exercise seem to affect the brain quite differently. The news may offer consolation for the growing numbers of us who are entering age groups most at risk for cognitive decline.”

Since I am part of an age group that’s “most at risk,” I pay special attention to articles like these.

Reynolds writes that “The new studies provide some additional and inspiring clarity on those issues, as well as, incidentally, on how you can get lab rats to weight trains who are entering age groups most at risk for cognitive decline.”

Anybody who has the wit to joke about “rats” and “weight” training in the same sentence gets kudos from me. (And please, no “gym rat” jokes.)

While I encourage you to read Reynolds’s article, I found this summary of both research studies both interesting and relevant, “What all of this new research suggests, says Teresa Liu-Ambrose, an associate professor in the Brain Research Center at the University of British Columbia who oversaw the experiments with older women, is that for the most robust brain health, it’s probably advisable to incorporate both aerobic and resistance training. It seems that each type of exercise “selectively targets different aspects of cognition,” she says, probably by sparking the release of different proteins in the body and brain.”

Here’s a link to the original research on humans published in the Journal of Aging Research: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23509628

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Shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”) and brain health

Shinrin-yoku is a form of Japanese preventive medicine which, according to a terrific article in the December issue of Outside magazine”…essentially involves hanging out in the woods. It’s not about wilderness; it’s about the nature-civilization hybrid the Japanese have cultivated for thousands of years. You stroll a little, maybe write a haiku, crack open a spicebush twig and inhale its woodsy, sassy scent.”

Sounds pastoral, peaceful and kumbaya-ish, but what does this have to do with brain health? 

According to author Florence Williams, The idea with Shinrin-yoku, a term coined by the Japanese government back in 1982 (but inspired by ancient Shinto and Buddhist practices), is to let nature enter your body through all five senses.  In fact, Japan has 48 official “Forest Therapy” trails designated especially for this.

As you can imagine, given the extremely long work-weeks, crowded living conditions, earthquakes and turgid economy, the Japanese people are under a bit of stress. And, given their proclivity for measuring everything and anything (having lived and worked in Japan I’ve seen this first-hand), I’m not surprised that they are on the vanguard of the science delving into Shinrin-yoku.

Williams uses this insight as a springboard to write that “So it makes sense that Japan’s scientists are in the vanguard of knowing how green spaces soothe the body and brain. While a small but impressive shelf of psychological research in recent decades suggests that spending time in nature improves cognition, relieves anxiety and depression, and even boosts empathy, scientists in Japan are measuring what’s actually happening to our cells and neurons. Led by Yoshifumi Miyazaki from the University of Chiba and Qing Li from the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, they’re using field tests, hormone analysis, and new brain-imaging technology to uncover how the magic works on a molecular level. Once we know that, it’s news we can use.”

In addition, the article goes on to report that that, “The Japanese work is essential, a Rosetta stone,” says Alan C. Logan, co-author of the recent book Your Brain on Nature. “We have to validate the ideas scientifically, through stress physiology, or we’re still stuck at Walden Pond.” Americans have often relegated nature to the romantic realm of Thoreau and Abbey. Viewing it as medicine is still largely foreign. “Studying the impact of the natural world on the brain is actually a scandalously new idea,” says Richard Louv, author of the 2008 bestseller Last Child in the Woods - the book that minted the term nature deficit disorder - and The Nature Principle, his 2010 follow-up about adults. “It should’ve been studied 30 to 50 years ago.”

I’ve read the entire article and am going to try to find time to go “forest bathing,” even in the winter. Not convinced? Here’s a link to the full article written with insight by Ms. Reynolds. - http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/wellness/Take-Two-Hours-of-Pine-Forest-and-Call-Me-in-the-Morning.html

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