exercise tagged posts

Researchers at UC San Francisco have discovered a mechanism that could explain how exercise improves cognition by shoring up the brain’s protective barrier. With age, the network of blood vessels—called the blood–brain barrier—gets leaky, letting harmful compounds enter the brain. This causes inflammation, which is associated with cognitive decline and is seen in conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. The research is published in the journal Cell.

Six years ago, the team identified a brain-rejuvenating enzyme called GPLD1 that mice produced in their livers when they exercised. But they couldn’t understand how it worked, because it cannot get into the brain.

The new study answers that question...

It’s well known that exercise is good for health and helps to prevent serious diseases, like cancer and heart disease, along with simply making people feel better overall. However, the molecular mechanisms responsible for preventing cancer or slowing its progression are not well understood. But, a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals how exercise can increase glucose and oxygen uptake in the skeletal and cardiac muscles, instead of allowing it to “feed” tumors.

Reduced tumor growth in exercised mice
To study how exercise-induced metabolic changes affect tumor growth, the research team injected mice with breast cancer cells and fed some of the mice a high-fat diet (HFD), consisting of 60% calories from ...

Capital Medical University, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reports that betaine, a molecule produced in the kidney and enhanced through sustained exercise, operates as a potent inhibitor of inflammatory and aging-related pathways.

Regular physical activity boosts health across cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurological systems. Scientists have traced improvements in immune function, insulin sensitivity, clearing of senescent cells and tissue regeneration to consistent physical activity. Earlier animal studies suggested that long-term exercise can delay aging processes and reduce vulnerability to chronic disease.

Precise molecular explanations for how sustained exercise reshapes human biology remain incomplete...

The findings suggest that biochemical and physical effects of exercise could help heal nerves. There’s no doubt that exercise does a body good. Regular activity not only strengthens muscles but can bolster our bones, blood vessels, and immune system.

Now, MIT engineers have found that exercise can also have benefits at the level of individual neurons. They observed that when muscles contract during exercise, they release a soup of biochemical signals called myokines...