Category: exercise

Alzheimer’s disease: omega-3 and exercise – the complexity of treatment

Fish and/or exercise to help Alzheimer’s disease? Alzheimer’s disease background: Alzheimer’s disease is the leading neurodegenerative dementia disorder. In most cases Alzheimer’s does not appear until after the age of 60, but there is an early onset form. It is estimated that 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. With about 36 million American’s in the 60+…

Can you teach an old dog new tricks – or at least juggling – and increase gray matter density in the brain ?

Image via Wikipedia You might, or might not, be an old dog – but we all want to be able keep on learning and ‘growing’. Yesterday, I wrote about a couple papers that demonstrated how learning to juggle increased gray matter density in a particular region of the brain (middle temporal area of the visual…

Exercise for healthy new neurons: even in middle age

Here is a follow-up to my Monday post on the quick rebound from an exercise layoff in the important brain health protein brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). A new paper published in the Journal of Applied Physiology examined running, BDNF, trkB, neurogenesis (new neurons), and neurite outgrowth (branching of the new neurons) in middle age rodents.…

A layoff results in aerobic deconditioning what about the brain?

I have previously written a few times about how quickly deconditioning of aerobic fitness occurs after an exercise layoff (see here and here), but what about brain health? I have a perfect reason for writing this new piece because with my recent travel schedule (multiple cities, multiple meetings, etc), busy conferences, and maybe an extra…

Exercise training and muscle energy efficiency

I am always encouraging people to exercise for the general and brain health. Research has demonstrated that exercise obviously improves muscle function and your performance. Additionally, while exercising a trained individual is more efficient biomechanically and biochemically (including increased fat oxidation and number of mitochondria). However, an unanswered question is the difference between trained and…

Moderation

Today’s piece is not high level neurobiology, more like some thoughts on simple everyday approach to life. I have written previously about the importance of consistency in regards to exercise (and see the piece by Alan Couzens), which I think is related to moderation. I have two examples where I recently didn’t practice moderation, one…