Compounds From Exercise In Blood Boost Brainpower In Mice, Maybe You Too!

exercise blood compounds brainpower man jogging near city river

Photo: Gervyn Louis, Unsplash

Blood Compounds From Running Reduce Inflammation And Boost Brainpower:

In the US and the First World, we really don’t seem to get a lot of exercise.

That’s such a problem that just about every health organization in the US is begging us to get more.

One of the other downsides to our lethargy is that even if exercise won’t fix a bad diet,

It’s fantastic for your health, as we’ve said here several times.

In fact, cardiovascular exercise like running and possibly plain-old walking might just fight or prevent Alzheimer’s.

But a Stanford team might just be on the way to changing the benefits we can all get from “exercise”…

The Short Answer:

Americans and many First World people just don’t get enough exercise.
That’s a shame because the list of benefits is almost endless.
Conversely, being overweight or obese leads to all kinds of health problems; especially Inflammation.
On a slightly-different note, every time researchers run blood-exchange experiments on old & young mice, the results are good.
This time, Stanford researchers did something more interesting.
They compared mice of the -same- ages but sedentary vs. active.
The sedentary mice started getting smarter and growing more brain-cells once they were injected with the plasma of active mice.
Exercise changed the activation of 2,000+ genes, and 235 proteins, with 49 of those being most conspicuous.
Those last 49 were associated with inflammation and the immune system.
Even more amazing is the researchers were able to narrow down the positive anti-inflammatory effects to just 1 protein. Clusterin.
This was also verified in other tests on humans to stop pre-dementia with exercise.
It may become possible in the future to help everyone optimize their lifelong brain-health by creating a drug or shot that gives people the right amount of Clusterin, regardless of age or exercise level.

Read on to find out the details…

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The Eternal War Between Inflammation & Exercise:

There is a whole set of problems that face people who don’t exercise and also get overweight.

From changes in body-chemistry, stress on the joints, higher probability of some diseases, and even increased inflammation.

Because body fat is an organ that does not self-regulate and puts out more hormones the more you have of it.

Which increases said inflammation.

But strangely enough, exercise makes your body do a whole bunch of things not restricted to making you look better for bikini season.

Like reducing your probability of getting all kinds of disease, improving your hormone-function, growing new Got-dang brain cells, and also reducing inflammation!

But here’s where things get a little weird…

Scoff If You Want, But The Blood-Change Experiments Work:

In the past, we’ve told you about researchers who experiment with old & young mice by trying to reinvigorate the older ones,

By either pairing their circulatory systems in something called “parabiosis”, or injecting them with young blood.

Just like the silicon valley billionaires hunting for the fountain of youth with their company called “Ambrosia“,

Or HT’s gorgeous pal, Yazemeenah Rossi who probably renews her youth every Halloween the same way Elizabeth Bathory did; probably.

But counter to the public critics of companies like Ambrosia, every single time researchers have tried the young-mouse-old-mouse experiments, they’ve hit pay dirt.

And this time they did it again, with even better results.

Don’t Get Up! It’s The Marvels Of Injectable Exercise!:

Over the course of 1 month, the Stanford team had mice exercise as much as they wanted,

Which amounted to running about 4-6 miles/day.

They then performed 3 injections of plasma from the runner mice to sedentary mice of the exact same age.

Then all-of-a-sudden, the sedentary mice started performing noticeably better on all kinds of cognitive tests!

These mice also started growing brain-cells in their memory-centers at an accelerated rate.

A New You. Exercise Changes You At The Genetic Level. Also Mice:

After some genetic testing, the injected mice were found to have changed the expression of over 2,000 genes.

Further Freakonomics revealed the genes with the biggest activation change were -all- related to inflammation!

In the runner-mice, the researchers found changes in 235 different proteins,

And most-notably out of them 23 were more scarce, and 26 were more plentiful.

Many of these were associated with an odd immune process that usually happens in the presence of pathogens like microbes & viruses.

Weirdly-enough if this mechanism gets started improperly, it can cause inflammation in the brain.

The Skeleton Key To Long-Term Brain Performance:

But wait, it gets even better.

Because the researchers combed through all the different proteins that seemed to get expressed or repressed.

And they found something interesting.

It’s called, “Clusterin”. And it’s the only component they removed from the plasma that completely stopped the anti-inflammatory brain benefits.

It was able to reduce brain inflammation in two types of mice, whether whole-body or brain-only, even though it was just injected into the circulatory system and not the brain itself.

The Clusterin Thesis Was Independently Verified In Humans:

On a different note, this protein was also found in the blood of veterans with pre-dementia who had been put on a 6-month exercise regimen by the same Stanford team to try to stop that condition.

So it seems Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray’s group has found what might be the skeleton key to keeping all of us sharper and more with-it as time goes by,

Or if for some reason our inflammation levels go up too long and we have a problem getting the right amount of exercise.

-Which is great news for everyone who’d like to learn from people like grandparents who’ve accumulated so much knowledge and wisdom over the years.

Now all we have to do is wait for either a prescription med or a biologic “vaccine” to make patients produce more Clusterin and clear up the scourge that is neuro-inflammation.