Coral Sanfeliu (Sabadell, 69 years old) directs the Neurodegeneration and Aging Group of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute, CSIC. Throughout his career he has focused on the study of what happens to the brain with aging and how exercise can protect against the deterioration that comes over time. Sanfeliu just published The brain in motion together with José Luis Trejo, director of the Lifestyle and Cognition Group of the Cajal Institute, in Madrid. In just over a hundred pages, the two researchers offer the main keys to how exercise can be a tool for healthy aging at the brain level.
Ask. One of the terms they raise in the book is the benefit of hormesis, how the slight damage to the body that exercise can cause has a long-term benefit. But the damage can also be excessive. What is the correct dose of exercise?
Answer. Of course, if the damage is very severe, this hormesis will not occur. It is a term that can also be applied to other problems, resistance to an upset or trauma, which you then create defenses against that stress. But if the stress is excessive, the damage will be much greater than the possible benefit.
In the case of exercise and its effects on the brain, there are studies in humans, but the main ones are in mice. We have seen, for example, that there are epigenetic changes, which are like labels that are placed on genes, which produce an activation of genes against inflammation or oxidative stress. Thus, you may have an injury, for these reasons, and you are already prepared to overcome it, because certain networks in the brain are reinforced or more networks are generated. It is not that the damage will be avoided, but that it will be better overcome when it happens. That is resilience, in this case induced by a hormetic response.
Q. Many people start exercising after many years of inactivity and do not start with something light, but rather training for half marathons or doing crossfit. This is good?
R. Depends. Science is not black and white. Sport is good and has many advantages, but it has to be progressive. The level of hormesis is increasingly improving and the threshold at which an exercise can be harmful is rising. Regarding the effects on the brain, this does not mean that athletes are smarter than others. If you do a lot of sports you will not be more intelligent, although you will have optimized brain responses. However, if you train very hard, if you do marathons, you have to monitor your heart rate, your vital signs, and do tests. But from the brain’s point of view, strenuous exercise is not going to benefit you.
Q. Are the benefits the same if you start at any age or is it necessary to start early?
R. What we have to think about is not that exercise improves our health, but that if we don’t do it, our health worsens. Children have to move, their brain is forming, and they have to interact with the environment and in this training, sport is important. If they don’t like one, they have to look for another, or go somewhere to dance, but they have to move so that their brain matures well. And for older people, any time is a good time to start.
Q. Can cognitive decline be recovered if you start playing sports at a very advanced age?
R. What has been damaged for so many years will not be repaired. With exercise we will not cure if there is neuronal death or a significant loss of connections. But in normal aging, when there is no neuronal death or added pathology, it will protect. If we talk about pre-Alzheimer’s or pre-dementia, although there are studies that have shown that something can be reversed, it is very difficult. Neither exercise nor diet will cure dementia, although its progression could be somewhat delayed.
Q. What would be the minimum activity to make profits?
R. Everything adds up, but it has to be an activity with a certain intensity. If we walk to work, it cannot be a walk looking in shop windows, we have to walk as if we missed the bus. And it has to be at least 10 minutes in a row, so that there is time for the heart rate to accelerate, factors to be released and everything to be activated. And you have to do a weekly minimum. A recommendation is the 150 minutes recommended by WHO.
Q. There is also talk of the damage caused by sitting for too long, something that in our society is necessary in many jobs.
R. Sitting eight hours a day is harmful and affects brain connections and neurotransmitters. It is true that sitting in front of the computer is not the same as sitting in front of the television, which is even worse. When we spend eight hours sitting, we have to do an hour of activity to compensate. Sedentary lifestyle increased with the pandemic and it is feared that dementia will increase, not only due to the long-term damage that the disease may have, but also due to inactivity. Apart from the increase in problems such as depression or anxiety.
Q. They talk in the book that the benefits of exercise are not only for those who practice it, but also for their descendants.
R. This has been studied by authors such as José Luis Trejo, co-author of the book, who saw that mice that exercised, mated with females that did not exercise, produced offspring that, even if they did not exercise, had mitochondria with better functionality and more changes. beneficial brain cells, than those of offspring of parents who did not exercise. As a mechanism, it was seen that there was an epigenetic factor called microRNA which was transmitted with sperm and reached the embryo, although it is likely that there are other ways in which this intergenerational transmission occurs.
Q. Does it make sense to consider the possibility of creating pharmacological treatments to replace the effects of exercise on the brain, for people who cannot or do not want to exercise?
R. Yes, it makes sense. If we identify mechanisms by which exercise activates antioxidant genes or protects against inflammation, or releases factors that will benefit neurons or neurotransmitters, we can look for treatments that activate those pathways that go from the gene to the production of a protein. beneficial. Sirtuin, for example, is a protein that reduces oxidative stress in cells, and its production is activated by exercise. It is an enzyme for survival and longevity and we are studying substances that activate the gene that produces it: an example is resveratrol, which is in grapes. Other options are those that seek to control inflammatory processes, which deteriorate with age and have negative effects on the brain.
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