Benefits of exercise wear off when you don't exercise

[hill dweller]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/well/ ... inish.html

When I'm injured or ill and can't work out, I try to do SOMETHING (short walk, light weight-lifting) to deter the mental and physical decline that follows from reduced exercise.

[Julie G]

Good find, Hill, but kinda depressing . The headline should really read: Blood flow decreases without exercise, but cognition remains unaffected. It'd be interesting to see this experiment extended to see at what point cognition begins to decline. Also, I wonder how these active folks would compare to couch potatoes as a control group?

[apod]

Speaking of blood flow & exercise, it's been interesting playing with my Withings "Body Cardio" scale (which attempts to measure Pulse Wave Velocity). I seem to notice improvement on the PWV chart data for ~3 days following aerobic exercise & sprints, whereas I don't really see this effect in the data with exclusive resistance training.

[MAC]

I believe the brain is just another organ (albeit the most important one), and the "use it or loose it" mantra probably applies viz a vis sedentary/non-social/lack of brain stimulation lifestyle being triggers for neurodegenerative decline.

Aside from my dietary changes and supplements, have increased my exercise regiment to at least 4-5 x/week of intense workout...that is, part of the workout is 30 min of intense cardio (treadmill, better for the knees) where I make sure I take my heart rate over 150 bpm. I am literally soaked when I am done.

I have to believe that this intense blood flow through the brain is an incredibly protective therapeutic benefit?! Have read many articles on vascular issue theories correlated to cerebral dysfunction. If we're thinking ancestral, early on when we started walking, running, and hunting, our voracious cpu growing brains were thirsting for nutrients, so we must have had needed (developed) incredible endurance (and short term high burst power mode) fitness to continue our evolution when food was scarce? This evolutionary brain/blood flow correlation must be encoded in our DNA?

I tried to search papers on AD studies on high performance (non-contact sports) athletes vs. general population control group. I haven't found any, so if anyone has references, would love to read.

[MAC]

re vascular cognitive impairment, recent publication fyi:

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/38/9896.short

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Despite significant mouse model data demonstrating both pathological and cognitive efficacy of anti-Aβ immunotherapy for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, clinical trial outcomes have been underwhelming, failing to meet any primary endpoints. We show here that vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) comorbidity eliminates cognitive efficacy of anti-Aβ immunotherapy, despite amyloid clearance. Further, cerebrovascular adverse events of the anti-Aβ immunotherapy are significantly exacerbated by the VCID comorbidity. These data suggest that VCID comorbidity with Alzheimer's disease may mute the response to anti-Aβ immunotherapy.

[GenePoole0304]

jee that is old news remade new I heard that 10 years ago or more.....
now I did not read the article but when you keep moving around non sedentary it should delay it.
From my gym experience I would say it depends on ones conditioning if one is near peak shape it would take longer to slide now the slippery slope.
Just keep walking and moving..

[SusanJ]

Just keep walking and moving..

Gene, my philosophy exactly.

[GenePoole0304]

I've been buzzing non stop in the garden trying to get things finished before the leaves come down in buckets here, just like a workout hauled heavy stuff, digging holes to transplant trees and plants, and I breathing deeply just like at the gym and my muscles are getting a workout as I keep moving. It is also a creative process using my plant inventory...I got things in various states of growth in my cold frames I'm sort of running it here like my own mini botanical garden and a designer, garden writer and Pres of the rhodo society here is due for a visit in a week. It's been a hobby for over 25 years and I'm a member of various plant societies.

This is one of the best studies on the benefits of exercise.

"Three months of endurance training induced changes in DNA methylation at almost 5000 specific sites across the human skeletal muscle genome that were associated to functionally relevant transcriptional changes"

https://openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/handle/10616/44873