Carla Murez Health Day Reporter
THURSDAY, Jan. 12, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Six minutes of high-intensity exercise may extend the lifespan of healthy brains, and may delay Alzheimer’s disease Onset of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, a new small study suggests.
Researchers have found that short but high-intensity cycling increases production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is responsible for brain formation, Learning and remembering are crucial. It is thought that BDNF may protect the brain from age-related mental decline.
“BDNF has shown great promise in animal models, but pharmacological interventions have so far failed to safely utilize Travis, lead study author at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Travis Gibbons said: “The protective effect of BDNF in humans.
,” Gibbons said.
The report was published Jan. 11 at Journal of Physiology.
BDNF promotes the brain’s ability to form new connections and pathways and also helps neurons survive .Animal studies have shown that increasing the availability of BDNF can improve cognitive abilities such as thinking, reasoning, or memory.
In this study, researchers wanted to understand the effects of fasting and exercise on BDNF production in humans.
Working with a dozen women, researchers compared fasting, 90 minutes of low-intensity cycling, and 6 minutes of high-intensity cycling and a combination of fasting and exercise.
Short but intense exercise compared with a day of fasting or no prolonged low-intensity exercise was the most effective method for increasing BDNF.
BDNF increased four to fivefold compared to fasting, which showed no change in BDNF, or prolonged activity, which showed a slight increase in BDNF .
More work is needed to better understand these findings, and the study authors
researchers hypothesize The brain switches its preferred fuel source to another to meet the body’s energy needs. This may mean metabolizing lactate instead of glucose during exercise, which may initiate pathways that lead to more BDNF in the blood.
The BDNF boost may be due to increased platelet counts, which store large amounts of BDNF. They explain that this is more affected by exercise than fasting.
Ongoing studies will further examine the effects of calorie restriction and exercise.
“We are now studying longer How fasting, for example, for up to three days, affects BDNF,” Gibbons said in a journal news release. “We were curious whether vigorous exercise at the beginning of fasting would accelerate the beneficial effects of fasting. Fasting and exercise are rarely studied together. We believe that fasting and exercise can be used in combination to optimize BDNF production in the human brain. “
More information
U.S. National Library of Medicine has more information on BDNF. Posted Jan 11, 2023
