Exercise to ward off neurodegeneration

dignan · Family Elder Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 1212

The article is about Alzheimer's, but mentions the relevance of what they're talking about for neurodegenerative disorders in general.

Beat Alzheimer's with exercise: Study shows how exertion keeps brain cells healthy in mice.

December 2, 2005 - Nature - Exercise helps to flush a toxic molecule from the brain and causes a beneficial one to move in and protect nerve cells, research on mice shows. The discovery might help to explain why staying fit and keeping mentally active seem to fend off Alzheimer's disease in humans.

"Our experiments support the idea that exercise is a good approach to all types of problems in the brain and that a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor," says Ignacio Torres-Aleman, who led the study at the Cajal Institute in Madrid.

Torres-Aleman and his colleagues were intrigued by previous studies showing that exercise slows mental decline in mice engineered to mimic Alzheimer's disease. They set out to discover the reason.

They found that exercise doubled the levels of a protein that helps to flush molecules thought to underlie Alzheimer's disease out of the mice's brains and into their blood. The protein, called megalin, ejects a potentially destructive protein called amyloid-beta. In Alzheimer's patients, amyloid-beta accumulates in clumps throughout the brain.

Our experiments support the idea that exercise is a good approach to all types of problems in the brain.

Megalin also binds to a beneficial molecule in the blood, called insulin-like growth factor, and transports it to the brain. This growth factor is perhaps best known for bulking up muscles after exercise, but it also helps to keep nerve cells healthy.

To reveal the tricks of megalin, the researchers manipulated levels of the protein in the brain of mice with Alzheimer's-like disease. Artificially boosting megalin partly improved mental performance, as measured in a maze test.

Levels of megalin decline with age in normal mice. The researchers suggest that this hints at a molecular link between ageing and neurodegenerative disease.

The findings appear in the Journal of Neuroscience. But whether they will hold true remains to be seen. Paul Adlard, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, has looked at the brains of mice in a different model of Alzheimer's disease. His data, although only preliminary, suggest that exercise does not boost levels of the protective insulin-like growth factor.

Adlard says that the findings of Torres-Aleman and his colleagues are "tantalizing", but that more study is needed.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051128/full/051128-14.html

bromley · Family Elder Joined: Sep 11, 2004 Posts: 1847

Dignan,

I ran five miles twice a week for fifteen years - stopped after dx.

I played badminton once a week, did weights, played tennis in the summer, and scuba dived most of the world's oceans.

These sorts of research findings drive me mad.

My great aunt is 85, still smokes 40 a day, still does her own garden, and still has all her marbles. She has never owned a pair of trainers.

I'm coming to the conclusion that health is just pot luck.

The day I start running again is the day I know that I am rid of MS.

Ian