How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast

where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday

[Music]

life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a

professor of neurobiology and

Opthalmology at Stanford school of

medicine today we are discussing

exercise and brain health which includes

brain longevity and brain performance

our ability to learn new information

over long periods of time and indeed

into old age today we are going to

discuss how different forms of exercise

resistance training cardiovascular

training of both long medium and short

duration can be used to improve the way

that your brain functions acutely

meaning immediately in the minutes and

hours and the day that you do that

exercise as well as in the long term in

the days weeks and months after you

perform that exercise and of course if

you're exercising regularly the effects

of exercise on brain health and

performance compound over time making

you better able to learn things are able

to retain information from the past and

indeed to expand your brain's capacity

to learn new types of information in new

ways in researching today's episode I

quickly came to realize that the number

of studies that have explored the

relationship between exercise brain

performance and brain health as well as

the range of different types of exercise

that have been explored in that context

is extremely vast there are literally

tens of thousands of studies on this

topic as well as metaanalyses and

reviews all of which point to positive

effects of Doing exercise of various

types on brain health and performance

within those many many studies you'll

find many many different exercise

protocols that lead to improvements in

brain performance and Longevity so the

goal of today's episode is to synthesize

that vast amount of information into a

logical framework that simplifies it and

clarifies it and places it within the

context of specific mechanisms both

neurobiological mechanisms and endocrine

based mechanisms that together can very

well explain the data on how exercise

impacts brain Health and Longevity such

that by the end of today's episode

you'll have both some specific

recommendations about how to use

exercise for sake of brain health and

performance that I believe will be new

to most of you as well as the ability to

think about the mechanisms and The

Logical framework that wraps around this

incredibly large literature on exercise

and brain performance so that you can

customize your exercise program on the

basis of how much time you have

available

your specific age your health status and

the specific types of brain changes that

you might be seeking through the use of

exercise and I should also say that by

learning how exercise impacts brain

performance and brain health you're also

going to learn some of the incredible

ways that your body communicates with

your brain and your brain communicates

with your body not just during exercise

but all of the time so today you're

going to learn a lot of practical tools

of course about exercise brain Health

and Longevity it's based on Research

that is incredibly interesting in in

some cases surprising and in almost all

cases actionable as some of you may

already know I have a book coming out

this year 2025 entitled protocols an

operating manual for the human body I'm

super excited about the book it includes

protocols that is actionable steps that

anyone can take to improve their sleep

motivation creativity gut microbiome

nutrition exercise stress modulation and

much more now the book was originally

scheduled to be released in April of

2025 however to make sure that the book

reflects the latest scientific research

I've decided to expand on the yes

already finished version of the book to

make sure that the protocols are as

upto-date as possible and reflect the

most modern and best findings so the new

release date for protocols is going to

be September of 2025 I do apologize for

the delay in release but I assure you

that I will make it worth your wait to

learn more about the book or to secure a

copy by pre-sale go to protocols

book.com there you'll find all the

information about the book and as well

as the various languages that the book

will be translated into before we begin

I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

is separate from my teaching and

research roles at Stanford it is however

part of my desire and effort to bring

zero cost to Consumer information about

science and science related tools to the

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talk about the relationship between

exercise brain Health and Longevity and

performance let's just take a couple of

minutes and really clearly Define what

we mean by exercise because most of us

have a concept of what exercise is but

for sake of understanding the

relationship between exercise and brain

performance most of the peer-reviewed

studies focus on two general categories

of exercise either cardiovascular

exercise or resistance training now of

course cardiovascular exercise can be a

very short duration high intensity so

getting heart rates up way way way up or

longer duration lower int intensity now

typically the amount of time scales with

that so the shorter intensity stuff

tends to be quick bouts of either 30

second 60c sometimes 2 minute or even 4

minute allout effort with some period of

rest afterwards or longer duration 20 30

45 or even 60 Minutes of cardiovascular

training at a more steady state lower

intensity and I should mention that

within the tens of thousands of studies

that are out there exploring the

relationship between exercise and brain

Health and Longevity

you will mostly see studies focused on

cardiovascular exercise and most of

those studies early on were focused on

the longer duration lower intensity

stuff so typically 30 to 60 Minutes of

lower intensity yet still elevating the

heart rate

exercise nowadays there's more of a

focus on the high-intensity interval

training and today we're even going to

hear about some studies that involve

very very short bursts so-called Sprints

of activity as short as 6 seconds long

followed by a period of rest repeat did

for a number of times and exploring what

the effect of that sort of I should say

very very short intensity exercise is on

immediate and long-term brain health and

performance okay so cardiovascular

training of different durations and

intensities involving different

durations of rest are one category that

we're going to talk about today the

other category of exercise we're going

to talk about today is resistance

training now most of the studies

involving resistance training and their

effects on the brain both brain

longevity and brain performance focus on

either compound so multi-joint movement

so think squats deadlifts bench press

shoulder press dips Etc but very often

and this is just a byproduct of how

studies are done in the

laboratory very often the exploration of

the relationship between resistance

training and brain Health and Longevity

are single joint isolation exercises

like a single leg leg extension even you

might be thinking wait just one leg

doing the leg extension yes the reason

for that and I spoke to some of the

scientists that do this sort of work is

that when they have subjects do a say

seated single leg leg extension as the

form of resistance training I know I and

some of you are probably chuckling like

really of all the things you could

select to see if it impacts brain health

you're going to have people kick up one

knee yep you do that why well most

people can do that type of movement it

doesn't take any training or it just

takes a little bit of direction as to

how to do it so it can be done

reasonably safely by many people

including people that are non-athletes

often older than 65 years old not that

there aren't some very fit 65y olds but

just people who are older than 65 but

don't have a lot of athletic background

can sit down in a chair put the pin at

the appropriate weight and move their

knee or rather Elevate their foot while

seated in a chair so-called single leg

leg extension and also it gives the

benefit of the opposite leg within

subject control for comparison in terms

of strength increases okay so set aside

any kind of you know like eye rolls or

Chuckles that you might have about

single leg leg extensions as the total

form of resistance training that's being

explored because yes those studies are

still informative in fact they perhaps

even identifi the lower threshold for

the amount of resistance training and

type of resistance training that could

benefit the brain but we also see

studies that involve compound exercises

so having people do free weight squats

or even weighted squats or deadlifts or

you know bench press dip deadlift type

combinations again when you look at the

literature exploring exercise and brain

health you're looking at studies that in

the best cases are very tightly

controlled that typically means having

people do them in the laboratory in a

very specific way sometimes using

untrained subjects meaning when the

subjects arrive at the study they

haven't done much exercise of that sort

sometimes it's involving trained

subjects both have their caveats of

course but keep in mind that during

today's discussion I'm going to be

pooling at many times across all these

studies exploring cardiovascular

exercise of different duration and

intensities resistance training of

different types and sometimes different

intensities as well but where there is a

specific piece of knowledge that can be

gleaned from understanding the exact

type of exercise that was done and a

specific type of Brain Change especially

in cases where it's been shown to be

especially beneficial I will be sure to

highlight that so as we proceed in

today's discussion keep in mind

exercises many things two general

categories most of the studies focus on

high-intensity or low intensity cardio

most of the studies involve either

single joint isolation exercises

sometimes even single joint single leg

isolation exercises or compound

exercises and keep in mind that most of

the studies exploring the relationship

between exercise and brain health and

performance are done to explore two

types of changes either what are called

acute changes meaning immediate changes

so they have people do the exercise and

then they have them take a cognitive

test or some other form of test that

analyzes brain health and performance or

they look at chronic effects which are

what are the changes in brain

performance and health over long periods

of time meaning having people do a

particular type of exercise anywhere

from two to four times per week although

typically it's three times per week and

doing that for anywhere from 4 weeks to

6 months again all of this relates to

the Practical aspects of running

controlled studies in the laboratory so

if by now you're thinking this is really

complicated how is it that we're

supposed to teach out the best things to

do given this huge ball of barbed wire

of different types of studies variables

Etc well I assure you we are going to

make this very clear and very actionable

and the thing to keep in mind is that

fortunately most all of the studies yes

most all of the studies that have

explored the relationship between

exercise brain Health and Longevity and

performance find positive effects now

for some of you who are Skeptics you

might be thinking well great so you can

do any form of exercise well in some

sense yes I'll actually tell you this

right off the bat there are good data

showing that if people do sixc Sprints

Max allout sprints on a stationary

bicycle followed by one minute rest and

repeat that six times you see

significant acute effects on brain

performance so the brain performance

could be a memory task sometimes it is a

memory task it could be what's called a

Stroop task which is a cognitive

flexibility task where you have to

distinguish between the colors that

words are written in and the content of

the words okay so-called Stroop task

I've talked about this on previous

podcast I'll talk about it a little bit

more later regardless of the cognitive

test that's used that very short

duration high-intensity training

increases performance

significantly as well 20 or 30 minutes

of so-called steady state cardio you

know figuring out how fast you can run

or row or swim or stationary bike for 20

to 30 minutes at a steady state and then

you analyze people's cognitive

performance on a memory task can be a

working memory task so remembering a

short string of numbers or it could be

math problems it could be the Stroop

task any number of different tasks

reveal the same thing which is that the

longer duration lower intensity cardio

also significantly improves performance

now does that mean that you can do six

rounds of six seconds of sprinting with

a minute in between or 20 minutes of

cardiovascular exercise and get the same

effect on brain performance well if

you're just looking at overall

improvements in performance so for

instance the the percentage of

information that you learn if you do or

you don't do the exercise or if you

compare those two forms of exercise that

I just mentioned in that sense yes it

really doesn't make a difference which

may have you scratching your head but in

a few moments I'll explain why that is

on the other hand different forms of

exercise of course impact our bodily

Health differently higher intensity

shorter duration exercise of course

impacts things like V2 Max and which

circulating hormones and neuromodulators

are going to be present very differently

than longer duration lower intensity EX

exercise so too if you have people do

single joint isolation resistance

training exercises like a single leg leg

extension or both legs leg extension

versus 10 sets of 10 in a squat exercise

you're going to see very different

specific adaptations at the physical

level at the bodily level but in every

case where you explore the acute the

immediate changes that occur in brain

output and function after people do that

sort of exercise you're going to see

significant increases when one does

physical exercise short duration

high-intensity cardio or higher

intensity resistance training single

joint training compound training single

joint isolation exercises compound

exercises one sees these increases in

brain performance at least acutely in

the immediate stage after the training

so we have to ask ourselves why is it

how is it that all these different forms

of exercise are positively impacting

brain performance and the answer is very

simple and fortunately gives us

tremendous leverage over our exercise

and how to impact our brain health and

the answer is arousal however the answer

isn't entirely arousal meaning not all

of the positive effects of exercise on

brain health longevity and performance

can be explained by arousal but when I

step back from the literature again an

enormous literature tens of thousands of

peer-reviewed papers many of which are

done exceptionally well by the way as

well as meta analyses and reviews I

think it's fair to say that probably 60

to 70% of the effects of exercise on

brain health performance and Longevity

can be explained by the specific shifts

in our physiology both bodily physiology

and directly within the brain's

physiology during those bouts of

exercise which is this increase in

so-called autonomic arousal which occurs

during the exercise but also extends

into a window after the exercise is

completed so we have to talk about this

relationship between exercise arousal

and acute brain performance meaning the

improvements in brain performance that

happen immediately after the exercise

and then we'll shift our Focus to the

effects of exercise that occur more

chronically that is the effects of

exercise on brain health and performance

that occur in the hours days weeks and

years after we exercise even if we are

continuing to exercise every day or

three times a week or whatever the

frequency might be but this issue of

arousing is extremely important and I

assure you it's not trivial in fact it

will help you understand a number of

things in the domains of deliberate cold

exposure stress trauma and most

importantly for today's discussion it

will help you design an exercise program

that's geared towards giving you the

maximum bodily health effects and the

maximum brain health effects okay in

order to understand the relationship

between exercise arousal and learning we

have to really clarify the relationship

between arousal and learning that's

going to set the stage for pretty much

everything else we're going to talk

about for the next 10 minutes or so and

it's oh so cool it also gives me the

opportunity to review a paper that I've

long loved which comes from Larry

kahill's group down at UC Irvine

entitled enhanced memory consolidation

with post-learning stress interaction

with the degree of arousal at encoding

this is just one of several papers from

the kill Group which essentially

identified the following there are a

couple of different ways you can

increase so-called autonomic arousal or

levels of alertness sometimes it's

called stress but autonomic arousal is

simply an increase in the amount of

activity in the so-called sympathetic

arm of the autonomic nervous system

which is nerds speak for more alert more

aroused wide-eyed ready to move higher

heart rate higher blood pressure more

alertness this is a great state to be in

for learning material provided it's not

too much alertness too much

arousal turns out this paper shows it's

also a great state to be in after you've

been exposed to material that you want

to learn and it's also the case that in

this paper and in many many other papers

from this and other

Laboratories that you can increase

levels of autonomic arousal by having

people put their arm into ice water for

1 to three minutes the so-called cold

pressure test it's a very commonly used

standard test this paper and many other

papers show that it leads to very rapid

and significant increases in circulating

levels of cortisol which yes sometimes

it's called a stress hormone but it's

really just a hormone involved in the

stress response but does a bunch of

other things too so they use that as a

tool after people have been exposed to

certain types of information to ask does

elevation in cortisol AKA autonomic

arousal improve one's ability to

remember information and the answer is

yes this study shows that several other

studies from the kill and other

laboratory show that sometimes those

studies use people putting their arm

into ice cold water other times they'll

inject them with a drug that increases

adrenaline also called epinephrine

sometimes also increases

cortisol the point being that elevations

in autonomic arousal after one is

exposed to information increases one's

memory for that information and one's

memory for the details of that

information now in this particular study

they compared emotionally Laden versus

non- emotionally Laden information and a

bunch of other details which are

interesting if you choose to puru this

study but I should mention that other

studies from this and other Laboratories

have shown time and time again increases

in autonomic arousal measured by

increases is in cortisol or adrenaline

also called epinephrine or

norepinephrine which is the sort of

analog within the brain that

consistently leads to better memory for

information that one has been exposed to

better memory for the details of that

information and oftentimes better

ability to work with that information to

come up with new ideas with that

information or to think logically about

that information in new ways in other

words increasing autonomic arousal

improves learning in memory now it's

also very important to understand that

that increase in autonomic arousal can

improve learning a memory if the

autonomic arousal occurs after the

exposure to the material most people

find that a bit surprising I certainly

did when I first read this paper it

makes sense if you start to think about

the Persistence of memories for things

like traumas or bad events right bad

event happens and there's this big spike

in cortisol and adrenaline and those

memories are hard to eradicate there's

certainly hard to remove the emotional

content from and if you think about it

in those instances the event happens and

then comes the big increase in cortisol

and adrenaline so that Maps very well

onto the study that I'm describing here

in addition however lots of Studies have

shown that increasing autonomic arousal

as measured by increases in Adrenaline

or cortisol or both or any number of

different measures of autonomic

arousal that occurs during the exposure

to the new material okay so this isn't

trauma this is like new math material

new history material new music material

new motor skill skill material that

you're trying to learn increases an

autonomic rousel that occur as you're

trying to so-called encode the

information you're being exposed to that

new information also significantly

improve learning and it's always through

increases in arousal in other words

whether or not you're measuring cortisol

adrenaline heart rate blood pressure

galvanic skin response how wide

someone's pupils are or small someone's

pupils are or any combination of those

things or any other measures of

autonomic arousal the consistent

takeaway is increases in arousal during

or after in particular after trying to

learn a certain material is going to

improve significantly the amount of

material that one learns the details of

that material and the Persistence of

that learning over time I'd like to take

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/u okay so now we've established the

elevated levels of autonomic arousal

either during or after and indeed also

before about of learning the so-called

encoding phase of learning when we're

exposed to the new material that we want

to learn and remember are all beneficial

this is wonderful news when we look out

on the whole of the literature on the

relationship between exercise and brain

health and performance we see studies

that incorporate exercise either before

or after about of learning and we also

find studies believe it or not that

combine exercise with learning in real

time literally exposing people to new

material that they're expected to learn

or trying to learn while they're walking

on a treadmill or running on a treadmill

or cycling or rowing yes those Studies

have also been done although for

practical reasons they're not as

numerous as the studies exploring the

relationship between exercise and

learning where the exercise is done

before or after the bout of learning

okay so what this means is wonderful

what this means is that if you want to

use exercise not just for enhancing your

bodily Health but also for brain health

and performance you can do that exercise

before during or after bouts of learning

that allows you to look at the

constraints of your life for instance

are you one of these people that can get

up at 5 or 6 or 7: a.m. and exercise

before everyone else gets up or before

your workday starts or your school day

starts do a round of exercise and then

get into your bouts of learning whatever

that material may be or are you somebody

who has to dive into the work day school

day family obligations Etc in which case

you might only be able to exercise later

in the day but you're probably still

somebody who would like to enhance their

brain health and performance so in that

case you might organize the thing that

you're trying to learn the encoding or

the exposure to the thing that you're

trying to learn either in written form

so you're reading or you're listening to

it or you're attending a class or

classes and then exercising after you're

exposed to that material in order to get

that elevated levels of arousal not

unlike the arrangement of the studies

that I was talking about earlier which

used the ice exposure in order to

generate increases in arousal and

thereby to improve learning and memory

so in the show note captions for this

episode we've batched a number of

different references that have explored

the relationship between exercise and

cognitive performance and across those

studies and the ones that are referenced

therein you'll find studies where the

exercise bout was done before or the

exercise bout was done during or the

exercise bout was done after a round of

learning or encoding of information and

I should mention that different studies

focus on different cognitive tasks so

exercise and the arousal associated with

exercise has been shown to acutely

improve recall so just raw recall of

material the details in material it's

been shown to improve cognitive

flexibility through things like the

Stroop task and so in a very convenient

way exercise has been shown to acutely

improve performance on all those sorts

of brain and memory tasks which is

greatly reassuring to all of us because

what it means is that it probably

doesn't matter so much when you do your

exercise or what it is that you're

trying to learn it's going to be

beneficial as long as the thing that

you're trying to learn and the exercise

are positioned fairly closely in time

now the one caveat to that is that

several studies have explored the

relationship between short duration

high-intensity interval training and

cognitive performance in particular

executive function that cognitive

prefrontal flexibility that we were

talking about a few moments ago and on

the whole all of those studies point to

improvements in executive control and

function so that context dependent

switching of knowledge and your ability

to think about things in a in a very

agile way if you will if people did a

high-intensity interval training session

just before they do that bout of

cognitive flexibility learning however

several studies have also looked at the

effect of repeated bouts of

high-intensity interval training and in

some some cases looking at the

mechanisms by which high-intensity

interval training improveed cognitive

performance and the basic takeaway is

the following and again I'll provide

references to these in the show note

captions that high-intensity interval

training done before or believe it or

not even during cognitive flexibility

tasks a couple of Studies have actually

explored that significantly improves

performance on those tasks again we

believe this is likely through enhanced

levels of arousal although some data

also point to the fact that it's also

likely through enhanced cerebral blood

flow simply more blood being delivered

to the brain during or in particular

after high-intensity interval training

more blood more fuel and other molecules

being delivered to the brain during a

cognitive task or cognitive flexibility

task makes sense why that would improve

cognitive

function and yet when Studies have

explored the consequence of doing

multiple high-intensity interval

training sessions and when I say high

intensity I mean high intensity these

are studies where lactate is elevated

we'll talk more about lactate in a few

minutes where typically people's heart

rate is either close to or at their

maximum heart rate for some period of

time either 30 seconds 60 seconds 2

minutes or in some cases people are

pushing really really hard for four

minutes then resting for four minutes

then pushing really hard for four

minutes then resting for four minutes

four times over the so-called 4x4

program that I know a number of you have

heard about if you haven't it's very

intense so you can imagine all out for

four minutes then rest all out for four

minutes then rest doing that several

times in a day okay so two bouts of 4x4

or two high-intensity interval training

sessions of any kind has been shown to

diminish cognitive performance if the

cognitive task comes after the second

high-intensity interval training session

now for most of us including me that

makes sense you think well they're tired

um you know people aren't able to focus

as much because they're devoting all

this energy to the exercise and indeed

that's true although the mechanism is

interesting the studies that have looked

at this have actually found that

cerebral blood flow during the two bouts

of high-intensity interval training are

more or less equal so it's not that the

first session necessarily precludes high

performance in the high-intensity

interval training session of in the

second session but then when you go on

to try and do a cognitive task that's

demanding and also requires elevated

levels of cerebral blood flow you find

that performance drops and this is

correlated with reductions in cerebral

blood flow that come from doing too much

high-intensity interval training now I

have to acknowledge that most people

aren't doing multiple high-intensity

interval training sessions per day but

this is a reminder an important reminder

in fact that if you're using exercise to

try and improve brain health and

function or even if you're just somebody

who's exercising but is also expected to

use their brain to learn things

throughout the day as most of us are and

to attend to things throughout the day

you need to be cautious about not

overdoing the high-intensity interval

training sessions this is also true for

resistance training you need to be aware

that very high-intensity exercise yes

increases cerebral blood flow and the

Del delivery of all these fuels and

other compounds to your brain during the

exercise if you do that correctly and

you don't overdo it you can capture some

of that wave of blood flow fuel Etc as

you enter the learning session but if

you quote unquote overdo it then you're

going to arrive to that bout of learning

with reduced cerebral blood flow and

you're going to be in a state that it's

very difficult to focus and learn new

information so there is such a thing as

too much arousal from exercise that

leads to troughs in arousal that

diminish cognitive performance and

learning now all of this is focused of

course on the relationship between

exercise and brain function at the acute

level the immediate level it's fair to

say that all high-intensity exercise and

resistance training is going to support

brain function in The Chronic sense in

the long-term sense in fact the

literature points to that and once again

I've batched the references for this

episode so that they're grouped together

according to the specific topics and

time stamps and the two studies that I

recommend you look at if you're

interested in this relationship between

high-intensity training and cognitive

function in particular executive

function that cognitive flexibility I

was talking about earlier such as in the

Stroop task there's a wonderful article

entitled executive function after

exhaustive exercise that's one to look

at and the other one which I think is

really nice and therefore I've placed

there really points to the way that a

single bout of exercise can acutely

improve brain function in particular

executive function and the title of that

paper not surprisingly is a single bout

of resistance exercise can enhance

episodic memory performance here's a fun

one as I continue to hammer on this

thesis that so many of the positive

effects of exercise on brain health and

performance at least in the acute sense

immediately after the exercise some

cases during the exercise are due to

arousal well then it should make sense

why things like so-called exercise

snacks you know this idea that you know

throughout the day you you know suddenly

do 25 quick jumping jacks or you you

know you jump up and down five times or

you do 20 air squats you know we've

heard about exercise snacks in different

context such as you know adjusting blood

glucose levels you hear a lot about that

you know after meals you know take a

walk or do some jumping jacks really

quick or you know do 20 air squats

throughout the day and people talk about

the sort of outsize positive effects of

those well check this out when it comes

to high-intensity interval training and

positive effects on cognitive

performance there's a study entitled the

influence of acute Sprint interval

training on cognitive performance in

healthy younger adults and this study

has people do 6C all out efforts you

heard that right six seconds okay so six

six seconds it always is tricky they

always use the same number it's the you

know four by4 by four okay six yes the

number six 6C allout efforts sprinting

on basically a stationary bike and then

a period of rest of one minute between

those

sixc allout efforts and they see a

significant Improvement in cognitive

performance so yes it's true that you

can do very brief very intense bouts of

exercise I mean just think about 6

seconds of sprinting one minute of just

Cruis or rest 6 seconds and then just

repeat for six Sprints total of six

seconds each and experience an

enhancement that is an acute or

immediate enhancement in cognitive

function and I can imagine no other

mechanistic explanation for that aside

from increased levels of autonomic

arousal any other mechanism that you

could envision you know igf1 Iris bdnf

things that we'll talk about in a few

minutes yes those might be deployed as

well but in terms of seeing something so

brief having such a fast action on

cognitive performance and given what you

now know about the relationship between

arousal focus and cognitive performance

I'd be willing to stake let's say six of

my 10 fingers on the idea that it's all

due to enhanced autonomic arousal okay

let's talk for a few minutes about the

mechanisms by which exercise improves

brain health and performance and I

realize when I say mechanism some of you

may say okay well I just want to know

what to do I don't need to hear about

the mechanisms but in this case

understanding just a little bit about

the pathways by which exercise impacts

the brain can give you a ton of Leverage

in designing the best exercise schedule

for your brain health and performance

and frankly for your exercise schedule

generally to generate things like fat

loss improvements and strength

hypertrophy endurance and so on in fact

let's do this mental experiment together

if we were to ask ourselves how is it

that exercise improves brain health and

performance based on what you know now

you'd probably say Well it increases

arousal the catacol amine so dopamine

epinephrine nor epinephrine it probably

increases heart rate so more blood

pumping to the brain and so on and so

forth and you would be correct about all

of that but let's just think a little

bit more deeply about how exercise

actually impacts the brain in the short

and long term and ask ourselves what are

the different physical Pathways what are

the different chemical Pathways by which

the movement of our body changes the way

that our brain works in the short and

long term so if we were to draw a stick

figure of a human and of Orient

ourselves to the different locations or

organs in the body that contain

potential sources of information for the

brain one place that we could start

would be of course the heart when you do

cardiovascular exercise of any kind

intense or not so intense short or long

your heart rate increases your blood

pressure increases likewise if you do

resistance training there will be heart

rate increases those heart rate

increases will come down between sets

but your heart rate tends to increase

when you exercise that's sort of a duh

well when your heart rate increases

there's actually both increased blood

flow to the brain and the delivery of

all the things that that blood carries

but there are also neural Pathways that

carry signals about that heart rate

about those blood pressure changes

to the brain in order to increase our

levels of alertness and focus that we

can leverage toward learning so the

first location in the body that we know

can communicate with the brain is the

heart when our heart beats faster that's

communicated to our autonomic nervous

system which resides in a number of

different brain areas in fact it's a

network of brain areas that act in

concert to create what we call autonomic

arousal we also have another pathway

that goes back from the brain to the

heart and other organs that we call the

vagus nerve which is a two- directional

pathway you know up from the body to the

brain and from the brain back to the

body we're going to talk a lot about the

Vegas in fact let's talk about the Vegas

now when we exercise we release

adrenaline which is also called

epinephrine from our adrenal glands

which are small glands that reside at

top both of our

kidneys that adrenaline or epinephrine

as it's also called does many things in

our body it's responsible for increasing

our heart rate further it's responsible

for a number of effects on the so-called

endothelial cells that make up the

vessels and capillar iies and it has

impacts on the neurons in our body that

create all sorts of changes in the way

that blood flows how fast it flows and

so on and so forth now here's a key

thing to understand adrenaline

epinephrine does not cross the bloodb

brain barrier so the adrenaline from our

adrenals doesn't actually get into the

brain to stimulate elevated levels of

alertness rather it acts on receptors on

the vagus nerve again the vagus nerve

communicates with the brain and also in

the vagus nerve certain brain areas

communicate with the body so adrenaline

has a lot of effects within the body but

when it's released it also acts on

so-called adrenergic receptors on the

vagus nerve then the vagus nerve is

activated in a way that stimulates the

activity of a brain area because

remember the vagus goes from the body

into the brain stimulates the so-called

NST and because neuroanatomists like to

argue about naming sometimes it'll also

be called the NTS the nucleus of the

solitary tract or the nucleus tractus

solitus super annoying I know forget the

acronym unless you want to know that

it's sometimes NST and sometimes it's

NTS don't ask me why neuro anatomists do

this in any case the NST can then

communicate with a really important

brain area whose name you should

remember which is the locus cerus the

locus cerus contains neurons that

release among other things nor

epinephrine which is similar in action

to epinephrine but different neurons in

the locus ceria send those little wires

that we call axons into the brain in a

very widespread manner it's almost as if

they're positioned to sprinkler the

brain with a neurochemical and that

neurochemical is norepinephrine they

also have the capacity to release other

neurochemicals but right now we're

concentrating on norepinephrine when

norepinephrine is released from the

locus cerus it has this tendency to

elevate the levels of activity in other

brain areas through this sort of

sprinkling like mechanism what that

means is that other areas of the brain

such as your prefrontal cortex such as

your hippocampus such as different areas

of the hypothalamus and indeed lots of

brain circuits all have a a greater

capacity to be engaged this is what

we're talking about when we talk about

autonomic arousal release of adrenaline

from the adrenals that has action within

the body elevated heart rate blood

pressure Etc and then adrenaline also

from the adrenals to the Vegas from the

Vegas to the NST NST to Locus cerius and

then Locus cerus sprinkl the brain with

this norepinephrine raising the levels

of Baseline activity in all those brain

areas and making them more likely to be

engaged by things that we're trying to

attend to more likely to engage say the

neurons of the prefrontal cortex that

can learn context dependent strategy

switching such as an aou task or when

we're trying to attend to information

and we go okay here's something

important I I need to pay attention to

this we're able to do that because of

that elevated level of norepinephrine it

facilitates it's permissive for

elevating our levels of attention and

focus it's also permissive for our

hippocampus to encode new memories and

for a bunch of other brain areas to do

their thing so to speak so knowing these

mechanisms is actually worthwhile if

you've ever heard that exercise can give

you energy this is the basis of that

statement right many people in fact

myself for many years thought okay I

definitely have to sleep well in order

to have energy and focus that's

absolutely true still true will always

be true I should maybe have some

caffeine be hydrated you know

well-nourished all this stuff in order

to have the energy to exercise but it's

also true that exercise gives us energy

and this is how it gives us energy when

we move our body the adrenals release

adrenaline and the adrenaline acts

through two different so-called parallel

Pathways within the body but again it

doesn't cross the bloodb brain barrier

so then there's a series of what we call

signaling relays or circuit relays up to

the locus culus and then a sort of

analog it's different but an analog to

epinephrine norepinephrine is released

within the brain and lo and behold we

have elevated levels of both bodily

energy and brain energy in Focus that we

can devote to that exercise but also to

the learning that comes after that

exercise which explains pretty much

everything that we've talked about up

until now during the course of this

podcast so the next time you're feeling

a little tired and you don't want to

work out remember exercise gives you

energy through the pathways that I just

described now anytime I talk about the

adrenals people start talking about

adrenal burnout they say you burn out

your adrenals you know there are these

crazy theories that you'll hear out

there you know coffee burns out your

adrenals not true you'll hear that if

you exercise too much it might burn out

your energy or your adrenals look you

have enough capacity within your

adrenals to survive

relatively long famines to survive long

bouts of challenge stress of many many

different kinds short challenges and so

on you're not going to burn out your

adrenals there is something called

adrenal insufficiency syndrome which is

a real syndrome there are diseases of

the adrenals but that's not what we're

referring to here you have plenty of

adrenaline in your adrenals that you can

deploy through movement through exercise

to get the elevation and arousal

attention and so forth that we've been

talking about in fact there's a a set of

biological Pathways that were just

recently discovered that will allow you

to understand how to use movement in

order to engage your adrenals so that

then those adrenals can release

adrenaline impact your vagus impact the

organs of your body the locus cerus and

elevate your levels of attention and

focus and a lot of the core components

of these pathways are highlighted in a

paper that I absolutely love another

paper I absolutely love this is from

Peter strick's laboratory at University

of

Pittsburgh which is entitled the

mindbody problem circuits that link the

cerebral cortex to the adrenal Medela

the adrenal Medela are those adrenals

that I've been referring to in the body

and the question that Peter strick and

colleagues asked was how is it that

movement actually gets the adrenals to

release adrenaline like what's the

signal does it come from the muscles

does it come from you know the

skeleton it's perfectly reasonable to

assume that there are signals that come

from the muscles and from the skeleton

that cause the adrenals to release

adrenaline when we exercise but what

stri colleagues did was actually super

clever they took some new tools that had

just become available these are tools

that allow the tracing of neural

circuits from organs in the body all the

way back up to the brain or from one

brain structure to another brain

structure and then to yet another brain

structure we don't have time to go into

all the technical details but this is a

technique that perhaps I'll talk about

on a future podcast it's one that my

laboratory used for a number of years to

trace other neural Pathways what they

discovered is that there are essentially

three Cate categories of brain areas all

of which communicate with the adrenals

and can cause them to release adrenaline

to create this elevation and arousal and

attention those three brain areas

include areas of the brain that are

involved in thinking what we call

cognition areas of the brain that are

related to what are called effective

states which is just kind of a more

General category that includes emotions

okay if you saw the hubman Lab podcast

episode that I did with Lisa Feldman

Barrett she explains beautifully the

distinction between affect States and

emotions but these are brain areas that

basically relate to what we are feeling

or how we're perceiving our environment

and how we're reacting to it these sorts

of things and then there's a third

category of brain areas that most

robustly communicates with the adrenals

and these are a collection of brain

areas that are all involved with

movement of particular areas of our body

these areas are broadly referred to as

the motor Network so these are areas of

the so-called cerebral cortex which are

in the outer portion of the brain and

they send these wires down the spinal

cord there's a little relay in the

spinal cord called the IML if you're

interested in the anatomical details

I'll put the link to this paper in the

show note

captions in any case these brain areas

that are involved in motor movement send

axons those wires down to the spinal

cord then from the spinal cord they send

a relay out via What's called the

colonic preganglionic neurons basically

what ends up happening is that

acetylcholine which is a neurom

modulator is released from these neurons

that originate in the spinal cord onto

the adrenal Mela and then the adrenal

Medela the so-called adrenals same thing

adrenal Medela adrenals releases

adrenaline that creates these effects in

the body on the heart the muscles and

other tissues and then as described

before that adrenaline also acts on the

vagus the Vagas up to the NST Locus

culus and we have this elevation and

alertness so this paper and papers that

came subsequent to it really explain how

it is that the move movement of our body

AKA exercise allows us to have this

elevation in arousal and alertness it's

a loop okay the adrenals release

adrenaline they do these things by these

two parallel Pathways I've been talking

about but your decision to engage these

motor areas to move particular areas of

your body is what deploys that

adrenaline now you might be thinking

well duh okay when I exercise there's

adrenaline release in order to exercise

I need to move my body and these brain

areas control the movement of my body

but it's not a duh it's actually very

profound because it turns out that the

specific brain areas that best activate

the adrenals are the brain areas that

control the muscles closest to the

midline the core musculature and the

Brain areas that are involved in

generating the sorts of movements that

we would call compound movements at

least in the context of resistance

training or that are responsible for

moving multiple joints at the same time

so what this means in the practical

sense is if you are feeling sluggish you

want energy or you're simply exercising

both for bodily effects and for brain

effects you need the deployment of

adrenaline of epinephrine you need the

deployment of norepinephrine in the

brain and by the way anytime you have a

deployment of norepinephrine in the

brain almost always there's a

coordinated action of release of

dopamine which most people have heard of

by now dopamine is involved in

motivation as well as movement Etc so

the simple takeaway here is if you want

to get the Al that comes from exercise

in order to use that arousal to leverage

it towards better cognition brain health

Etc the key thing is to make sure that

you're doing exercises that are compound

exercises so that these would be the

movements you can look these up just say

compound exercises you can put that

anywhere and you'll see that that

includes things like squats deadlifts

you know bench presses dips pull-ups

rows and yes of course you want to train

your whole body so that you have you

know symmetry of a function of strength

and you want to offset any injuries and

things of that sort

or aesthetic reasons perhaps but the

idea here is if you want energy from

exercise you want Focus you need the

deployment of the neurochemicals that

we've been discussing most notably

epinephrine and norepinephrine and

through the identification of this motor

Network as well as the effective and

cognitive networks that Converge on this

area of the spinal cord and then send

communication to the adrenal Medela you

can essentially control the levels of

arousal that your body and brain

produces so in describing this my hope

is that you'll no longer think about

exercise as just elevating your heart

rate or you no longer think about

exercise just as moving your body but

rather that the movement of your body is

creating specific neurochemical outcomes

both in the body and the brain that

create the arousal that initiates the

improvements in focus and attention that

allow you to learn better and that

contribute generally to brain Health and

Longevity and of course you ifado out

there will remind me I'm sure but I'm

going to beat you to the punch here yes

your hypothalamus is also talking to

your pituitary which releases certain

chemicals into your bloodstream which

also go to your adrenals to cause your

adrenals to deploy both adrenaline

epinephrine as well as cortisol that

pathway is still intact okay but that's

a slightly slower pathway here I'm

focusing on the neural Pathways some of

which have only recently been discovered

in the last 5 or 10 years that work very

very fast to generate the sorts of

arousal that are relevant to brain

function and brain long ity okay nothing

has changed in terms of the old story

about how the brain impacts the adrenals

that's all still there but here we're

into the modern stuff and by the way for

those of you that are interested in

things like psychosomatic disorders

trauma and how trauma can quote unquote

be stored in the body and not so much

stored in the body but how it can impact

the body and then how the body itself

can impact the brain this paper has also

been used as support for the idea that

indeed those effective areas those

emotional areas those cognitive areas

have a route by which they can

communicate with the adrenal Medela to

cause the release of adrenaline when we

have specific thoughts it was always

known that if we have specific thoughts

it can quote unquote stress us out our

heart rate can go up Etc this paper also

provides a reasonable anatomical

substrate for that phenomenon you know I

never want to make too much of any one

single paper or finding but I will say

that after I read that paper from

stricken colleagues and through some of

the subsequent discussions about that

paper that I overheard at meetings and

so forth it really made me think

differently about exercise and now

anytime that I'm feeling tired provided

that I'm not chronically sleep deprived

or something of that sort I remind

myself that if I start moving my body in

particular if I engage core muscles was

one of the key findings in that paper

that the areas of the brain that control

the core muscles as well as do compound

movements I move multiple joints I start

you know warming up in a way that

includes some you know maybe even just

air squats or some running in place or

jumping jacks things of that sort that

the increase in energy that I'm

perceiving is real it's based on the

same neurochemical outputs that would

occur had I gone into the gym or to the

run or whatever workout with tons of

energy it would just have increased the

level of adrenaline further so this idea

that we can actually control our body

with our mind and to some extent our

mind with our body that's absolutely

true and this is one of the tools that I

find particularly useful anytime I want

to overcome that wall of kind of

resistance to not doing the physical

exercise that I know I and basically all

of us should be doing I'd like to take a

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okay so let's think just a little bit

more about how the body communicates

with the brain shuring exercise both in

order to understand the mechanisms by

which exercise improves brain health and

function but also ways that we can

leverage that to improve brain health

and function by using exercise one of

the more interesting and powerful and

indeed surprising ways that the body

communicates with the brain during

exercise to improve brain health and

indeed our ability to remember things

and to learn is the way that our bones

our skeleton when they're under loads

okay when they experience mechanical

stress not severe mechanical stress that

would break them but but mechanical

stress they release hormones in

particular something called

osteocalcin now you might be thinking

wait the bones release hormones yes your

bones release hormones one of which is

called osteocalcin osteocalcin is an

incredible molecule animal studies that

were done mainly at Columbia school of

medicine but later also at Columbia and

elsewhere in humans have shown that

osteocalcin is released from the bones

during exercise both in mice and in

humans travels to the brain so it can

cross the bloodb brain barrier and there

it can encourage the growth of neurons

and their connections within the hip hi

a campus an area of the brain that's

vitally important for the encoding of

new memories and there are some data not

a ton but there's some data which

suggests that perhaps I want to

highlight underscore and bold face

perhaps can increase the number of

neurons in the so-called dentate gyrus

of the hippocampus to allow even better

capacity for memory now osteocalcin is

therefore a really interesting molecule

Right comes from Bones travels to the

brain improves functioning of the

hippocampus which is important for

learning in memory that's amazing and it

does so in part through the actions of

something that most of you perhaps have

heard of which is called bdnf or brain

derived neutrophic Factor now it's very

important for us to understand that

anytime we hear about exercise increases

a growth factor and by the way exercise

increases brain derived neutrophic

Factor it increases growth factors that

cause the growth of endothelial cells so

blood vessels we'll talk more about that

in a moment and it increases nerve

growth factor it's not just bdnf there

are lots of different growth factors a

few of which ngf and bdnf act on neurons

and other growth factors that act on

endothelial cells

vasculature it seems that a lot of the

effects of bdnf on the brain that are

caused by doing exercise and that

benefit us in terms of short and

long-term memory our ability to encode

new things and remember them for long

periods of time to resist age related

degeneration because that's the case

indeed that our hippocampus decreases in

volume over time as we age just natur

natur even in somebody that doesn't have

Alzheimer's dementia and exercise can

adjust the slope of that decline

significantly provided there's enough

exercise and the appropriate exercise I

don't think all but many of the effects

of bdnf appear to be mediated by

osteocalcin what this means is that any

exercise program that's designed not

just to benefit our body but also our

brain health and performance should do

something to load the skeleton in some

sort of impactful way that causes the

release of

osteocalcin now unfortunately there has

not been a systematic exploration of the

specific types of exercise that best

cause the release of osteocalcin in

humans but based on what we understand

about how osteocalcin is made and

released it seems reasonable to assume

and reasonable to employ some exercise

within your weekly exercise that

involves jumping of some sort in

particular jumping where you have to

control the Ecentric or Landing portion

of that jump now I'm certainly not the

first to talk about this it's been

discussed in a different context that is

jumping and Landing has been discussed

in a different context namely by Peter

AA and others who have talked about the

fact that as people age one of the

primary causes of mortality are the

infections and the lack of Mobility

caused by Falls that people generally

have when they're going downstairs or

down things stepping down is a common

source of falls falls are are a common

source of breaking things breaking

things is a common source of inactivity

and inactivity is a common source of

infections and other things that lead to

earlier

mortality what this means for all of us

young middle-aged and old is that we

should include some form of jumping in

our weekly exercise now you could

imagine doing that within your

high-intensity interval training

provided you can do it safely and not

get injured but this is also a call for

all of us to think about including say

some jumping rope and if you're going to

jump rope maybe not just jumping you

know a centimeter off the ground to be

able to just consistently Skip Skip Skip

Skip Along but maybe doing some high

knees maybe doing some double unders if

you can do those um perhaps doing some

box jumps so jumping off boxes of

different heights again what you can do

safely without getting injured no doubt

is going to provide load to the skeleton

I guess unless you're doing it

underwater in outer space it's hard to

imagine how it wouldn't and that seems

to me like the most direct way to employ

this osteocalcin pathway this pathway

from from the bones to the brain and

neurogenesis in the hippocampus I do

believe is likely to underly a lot of

the enhancement of learning and memory

that's seen in terms of the chronic

effects of exercise on brain health and

brain function over time that is not

just the things that exercise does via

arousal in the minutes and hours after

exercise but the way the exercise can

improve literally the size and structure

of one of the most critical structures

in our brain that's responsible for

learning a memory the hippocampus and of

course there are a lot of other ways

that the body communicates with the

brain we definitely don't have time to

go through all of them but it's worth

thinking about a few of them logically

just in terms of listing them off and

thinking about how they might

communicate with the brain to improve

brain Health and Longevity when you

exercise you utilize fuel differently

depending on whether or not you're

relying on glycogen or fatty acids and

of course it's going to depend on how

long you've been exercising and the type

of exercise and what you're using for

fuel literally the foods you eat Etc we

don't have time to go into all of that

but get this turns out that there are

liver to brain neural Pathways so your

liver can communicate with neurons and

other cells in your brain including the

gal cells the cells that are important

for regulating energy metabolism and a

bunch of other things too your liver can

communicate to your brain both through

neural Pathways and by releasing things

into your bloodstream that then

communicate to your brain oh the body is

using a different source of fuel it's

been using different sources or

combinations of fuels for the last 20

minutes maybe you should adjust your

brain state in order to be able to cope

with that or in response to that and of

course there are other organs in the

body that are communicating with the

brain also your diaphragm for instance

is communicating with your brain through

indirect Pathways about how you're

breathing during exercise and of course

your brain is controlling your diaphragm

too via a number of stations including

the pathway that includes the frenic

nerve which controls the diaphragm the

point here is that once you start

exercising of course that has an impact

on the organs in your body they change

the way that they're functioning your

heart your liver your adrenals your

skeleton literally your bones and of

course your

muscles and they are releasing things

that impact brain function either

directly or indirectly once you start

thinking about exercise in that context

even if we don't parse each and every

one of those Pathways individually you

can start thinking about exercise as a

mult factorial way of enhancing and

changing brain activity so that it

positions it to learn better in the

subsequent hours and days as well as

modifying areas of the brain like the

hippocampus by making certain brain

areas literally bigger more powerful at

engaging the sorts of things that they

do in the case of the hippocampus

learning in the case of the prefrontal

cortex context dependent decision-making

updating strategies these sorts of

things and generally speaking exercise

causes the release of things like bdnf

bring der neutrophic factor and nerve

growth factor that enhance the health

and stability of existing neuron

connections and something that is very

rarely if ever discussed publicly not

because it's some sort of secret that

people want to keep but I just don't

hear it discussed is that bdnf is an

activity dependent molecule it's a

molecule that can serve to stabilize and

enhance the growth of neurons keep their

connections in place grow new

connections and it does so when neur

neurons are active so the point is that

bdnf has to be released in order for

that to happen but the release of bdnf

itself is activity dependent and it acts

best on neurons that are already active

so if ever there was a mechanism that

could explain why it is that people that

exercise regularly seem to maintain

healthier brains into later life it's

that one it's that bdnf is activity

dependent when I say Activity dependent

I mean the electrical activity of

neurons is what causes the release of

bdnf and once bdnf is released it has

the best opportunity to stabilize and

enhance the growth of existing neurons

if those other neurons are already

active now if we were to list off all

the different Pathways and mechanisms by

which exercise improves brain health and

performance it would be a list of

probably I don't know somewhere between

40 and 100 different molecular Pathways

and probably I don't know somewhere

between 12 and 20 different anatomical

Pathways and we certainly don't have

time for all that I don't think that's

what you're interested in I've tried to

just highlight some of the key ones

today one additional one that I'd like

to highlight is the lactate pathway or

the impact of lactate when we exercise

this is getting discussed more and more

these days on podcast and

elsewhere one interesting finding for

instance is that lactate is what's

produced when we exercise intensely our

muscles produce lactate and lactate is a

very powerful appetite suppressant now

some of you may be saying well and I

exercise hard I get really really hungry

well that may be true but it's also true

that if you exercise really really hard

and then you hydrate well and you wait a

little while often times that hunger

will subside I'm not saying that you

should starve yourself after exercise

fuel as needed for you if you're an

intermittent faster do that thing if you

like to eat right after you exercise do

that do what's best for you but

understand that lactate has powerful

effects on our appetite because why

because lactate has powerful effects not

just on our body body but on our brain

and it is able to impact the activity of

neurons in our so-called hypothalamus

little marbleized region above the roof

of our mouth that contains some of the

neurons that control our appetite and

our degree of satiety so the point here

is that lactate is a molecule produced

in the body that can actually signal to

the brain most of you perhaps have heard

that lactate can be used as a fuel for

neurons during exercise lactate is the

preferred fuel for neurons under most

circumstances especially under circum

ances of intense exercise that spares

glucose for other things including for

cognitive work later on this is perhaps

one of the reasons why when people do

intense exercise provided it's not too

long and too intense and then you go to

learn something you have enhanced Focus

it's because of the arousal we've been

talking about all along today but it's

also because we believe that there's

glucose there's fuel that's been spared

that then can be used by the neurons

because during the exercise you weren't

using quite as much glucose you were

using less lactate now lactate is also a

stimulus for something called the blood

brain barrier which is made up of

endothelial cells specialized

endothelial cells that act as a barrier

so that certain things in particular

large molecules can't cross from the

body into the brain lactate stimulates

the release of something called vegf vgf

which is basically an endothelial growth

factor that promotes the stability and

growth of the blood brain barrier this

is very important in the context of

brain Health and Longevity and longevity

in particular because one of the major

features of age related cognitive

decline and one that's greatly

exacerbated in Alzheimer's is a

breakdown of the bloodb brain barrier so

the Integrity the structure and function

of the bloodb brain barrier is something

that's very important and related to

brain health and exercise that's intense

enough to produce lactate causes the

increase in vegf that acts on and within

the endothelial cells to improve the

Integrity of the bloodb brain barrier

and because I mentioned the asites

earlier and because I did my postto with

somebody that was sort of famous for

popularizing the study of asites when no

one else wanted to study the asites now

everybody studies the asites but I have

to mention something about asites which

no they're not just a support cell

certain types of cells in the brain are

called Gia the Gia come in multiple

forms oligodendrocytes in the periphery

they're called Schwan cells but then you

also have asites and asites sit around

the synapse they in sheath synapses

remember synapses are the communication

points between neurons and the

astrocytes are beautifully positioned to

read out the amount of activity that's

occurring between neurons and produce

fuel for those neurons so the astrocytes

mainly use glucose for fuel but they can

produce lactate so again we have this

activity dependent phenomenon that is

when certain neurons are very very

active the asites are able to produce

more lactate the neurons can use lactate

spares glucose and a bunch of great

things happen when I say great things

happen I mean in the context of the ways

that exercise can improve brain function

because those elevated levels of lactate

in turn also increase bdnf we already

talked about the blood brain barrier

basically the muscles producing lactate

is terrific but the asites producing

lactate for the neurons to feed on is

also terrific because lactate can be

used as a fuel and it triggers all these

Downstream or subsequent mechanisms

including bdnf so basically what we're

talking about is the lots and lots of

ways that exercise improves brain health

in the longterm bdnf brain plasticity

stability of synapses and so forth maybe

even new neurons maybe not a lot of

evidence for that in humans yet frankly

but maybe and exercise can improve brain

function in the short term through

mechanisms of arousal but also through

alternate fuel usage such as lactate

from the body and from cells within the

brain that we call the astrocytes and

the release of all sorts of other things

igf1 to promote more vasculature and on

and on and on it's really quite

beautiful the sort of wave front of

molecules and neural Pathways that's

initiated when we exercise provided we

exercise intensely enough so this is a

you know double and triple call for

including at least some high-intensity

interval training V2 max type training

each week as well as doing resistance

training and of course the long duration

cardiovascular training the sort of you

know 30 or 45 or 60 Minute or maybe even

2our zone two type stuff you can look up

zone two but it's basically a level of

cardiovascular training that still

allows you to talk but were you to go

any more intensely you wouldn't be able

to complete

sentences that zone two training of

course is going to be very powerful for

the health and integrity of the

cardiovascular system that's going to

allow for the delivery of all these

molecules and of course the delivery of

blood flow itself to the brain because

cerebral blood flow is Central to brain

function okay so if you're right at the

threshold of about to be overwhelmed by

the number of different mechanisms by

which exercise improves brain function

and health

we're not going to add any more

mechanisms we are however going to talk

about the Practical steps that you can

take to make sure that you're getting

the most brain benefits from your

exercise based on what we've talked

about so far as well as a broad survey

of the

literature and again it is a big

literature here are the four things that

I believe everyone should be doing every

single week in terms of their exercise

program now we've talked a lot about

exercise on this podcast before

can summarize the very very top Contour

of what my takeaway is from the

literature and from discussions with

experts such as Dr Andy Galpin and

others which is I believe that everybody

should include both resistance training

could be body weight free weights

machines some combination of those as

well as cardiovascular training each

week and that the cardiovascular

training should include both

high-intensity interval training at

least once per week and some so-called

long slow distance training or zone two

type training each week so presumably

most of you are doing some form of that

so maybe you're doing more cardio than

resistance training maybe you're doing

more resistance training than cardio if

you're interested in a zeroc cost

program where you can you know start to

sculpt out a idealized program for you

but you want to start with a kind of

General template we have a newsletter

that you can access at hubman lab.com

zero cost you don't even have to sign up

to access it although if you want to

sign up for the newsletter that could be

valuable to you too completely zero cost

you can go to hubman lab.com

go to newsletter scroll down to

foundational Fitness protocol it

describes the program that I've been

following essentially for 30 plus years

and again it's about three

cardiovascular training sessions per

week three resistance training sessions

per week the cardiovascular training

ranges in time from about 12 minutes and

then a longer 60 Minute

session the resistance training is

generally 45 to 75 minutes so on average

about an

hour and it might sound like a lot but

but when you look at that foundational

Fitness protocol what you realize is

that some of the workouts are really

really short some of them are a little

bit longer none of them are longer than

an hour so it's pretty reasonable to do

and I certainly did it while working

well to be frank extremely long hours

for many many years so provided your

sleep is intact and other areas of your

life are are dialed in with stress Etc

should be doable for most everybody but

modify it according to what you need or

if you're doing something completely

different more power to you I just want

you to know that's available as a zero

cost resource if you want to check it

out with all of that said whatever

exercise you happen to be doing or you

happen to be

planning I do believe it should include

four things specifically to improve

brain health and performance although

these four things will also benefit you

at the level of your bodily health no

doubt the first thing is to include at

least one workout per week that is of a

long slow distance nature so zone two

type cardio maybe you get a little bit

up into zone three but basically jogging

swimming

rowing any activity that you can carry

out consistently for 45 to 75 minutes

without getting injured right people

always say well do I have to run no if

you don't like running and running's too

hard on your body or you'll get injured

then do something else maybe you do the

rower maybe you ride a stationary bike

maybe you ride a road bike for me it's

jogging generally or hiking with a

weight vest those are the things that I

enjoy and that I can do without getting

injured but for other people it's a

different it's a different exercise but

at least one one long slow distance

training session per week is going to be

very beneficial for brain health because

of the way that it impacts cerebral

blood flow and athal health and

basically the way that cardiovascular

health improves brain function at the

level of blood flow fuel delivery Etc

the second thing is to include at least

one workout per week that's of the

so-called high-intensity interval

training type now there are a lot of

different types of high-intensity

interval training out there in fact Dr

Andy Galpin says you know we'll hear

about say like the 4x4x4 protocol right

four minutes of going as hard as you can

for four

minutes basically where there's no

variation in the intensity through that

whole four minutes you're going hard the

whole four minutes but only as hard as

you can for the entire four minutes then

resting four minutes and then repeating

that 4x4 cycle four times so that's one

way to do it but Dr Andy Galpin would be

the first to tell you that probably also

get great results from a 3X3 by4 type of

workout or a 6 by6 by six type of

workout although for many people that's

going to be too much and too intense or

if you're me and you prefer a

high-intensity interval training session

that is more like a two minutes on as

hard as you can go for two minutes and

then rest for say three to four minutes

and then repeat maybe four times maybe

five times well then do that I have a

high-intensity interval training session

that I do when I'm very limited on time

which involves getting on the airdine

bike they sometimes called the assault

bike there's a lot of resistance has

that fan which always thought was to

cool me off but then you know it's uh

once I actually got on one and and and

started riding I realized that that's to

provide resistance so but basically if

I'm limited on time I'll hop on there

I'll pedal for about a minute or two

just kind of warm up and then I'll go

all out for a minute rest for 30 seconds

all out for a minute rest for 30 seconds

the first three or four of those Cycles

feeling pretty good by the seventh and

eighth one I'm you know um I'm praying

and generally when one finishes that

type of workout your heart rate is very

very elevated now I don't tend to track

my heart rate during exercise perhaps I

should but I don't like to get you know

too weigh down with technology when I

exercise I like to go more on feel

that's just

me I find that my heart rate is

extremely high right as I get off that

thing but you know five minutes later

it's back to Baseline and I certainly

feel energized after doing that to go do

some cognitive work to shower up and to

head to work that sort of thing so pick

a high-intensity interval training

session that you can do at least once

per week and that works for you and

again it's really important to pick a

form of exercise for the high-intensity

interval training that you can do

without getting injured this is so

important you know one way to really

limit your brain health and bodily

health is to get injured and to not be

able to exercise in a few minutes I'll

tell you about what happens when you

don't exercise for a certain duration

and how that negatively impacts your

brain health and it's not that long

before that starts to happen but in the

meantime the first was long slow

distance or so-called Zone 2 so what we

could call that LSD not the Psychedelic

but long slow distance exercise second

was high-intensity interval training or

HIIT or hit the third would be Tut Tu

time under ttention if you're doing

resistance training and I do believe

everybody should be doing resistance

training there are a near infinite

number of different ways to do

resistance training as you well know you

can move the weight ballistically you

can control the Ecentric you can do any

number of different things but some

proportion of the exercises that you do

during your resistance training during

the week should include time under

tension training where you're really

emphasizing the contraction of the

muscles the slow lowering of the weight

as well as the lifting of the weight

Contracting the muscles as hard as you

can and this is really to emphasize the

nerve to muscle Pathways and the way

that time under tension promotes the

release of things from muscles into the

bloodstream that can positively impact

the brain as well as the way that

focusing your brain on exercises such

that you're isolating muscles or even if

you're not doing a so-called isolation

exercise maybe you're doing a compound

exercise like a dip or a squat or a

deadlift but that really concentrating

on the muscles that are supposed to be

managing the work and not just moving

the weight but challenging the muscles

this very important think challenging

the muscles using the weight not lifting

weights or moving weights by focusing on

time under tension you will of course

get benefits as it relates to

hypertrophy and strength increases in

particular hypertrophy doing time under

attention requires you to engage the

what we call the upper motor neuron to

lower motor neuron you have motor

neurons in your cortex you also have

motor neurons in your spinal cord those

Pathways that then go out to the muscles

and control the muscles in very

deliberate ways and time under tension

training is very beneficial for the

deployment of the molecules that work

both within the body but also within the

brain to support brain health and

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docomo okay so we have long slow

distance high-intensity interval

training and some degree of time under

tension training with resistance

training you might be asking how many

sets What proportion that depends on

your goals right if you're a powerlifter

and you're trying to lift bigger weights

or you simply want to get stronger not

going to devote a lot of your training

to time under tension most likely you're

going to be focusing mostly on the

performance of those lifts to move more

weight but in my case what I do just for

sake of example again this is just what

I happen to do is I tend to make a full

third of my resistance training just

focused on time under tension so if I do

two exercises typically the first

exercise is a compound exercise so if

it's a shoulder press for instance I'll

do a couple warm-up sets and then the

work sets I try and move the weight and

generally I tend to work pretty pretty

heavy in the for me heavy for me in the

4 to8 repetition range I'll try and move

the weight as quickly as I can on the

concentric phase the lifting phase and

then at least twice as slow on the

lowering phase and then I pause while

keeping the muscles under tension I

never really set the weight down at all

during a set if I'm doing my job that

is and then the second exercise that I

do I really focus even more on time

under tension so whether or not it's a

compound exercise or an isolation

exercise again compound exercise

multiple joints mooving isolation

exercise single joints moving I'll

really concentrate on keeping the muscle

under tension the entire time in fact

I'll lift the weight off the stack if

it's a machine or if it's a free weight

just a little bit engage the muscles

that I'm trying to activate or train and

then keep it under tension throughout

the concentric the contraction and the

lowering of that weight and then never

actually set it down until the end of

the set AKA increasing the time under

tension and then the fourth category of

exercise that I believe everybody should

include in their existing workouts or

add if you're not currently working

out is some sort of explosive

jumping and or Ecentric Landing now the

explosive jumping with Ecentric Landing

you could do on a mat right most people

won't do it on concrete because they're

worried about impact that sort of thing

but let's say you have some some mats or

you're on a lawn or you're on dirt or

you're you know jumping up onto a box as

high as you can and then jumping down

and controlling the Ecentric portion

again pick something that you can do

safely progress slowly right if you're

going to jump up and off boxes you want

to start with low boxes I know that many

of you can jump quite High um and I'm

not one of those people but if you can

jump quite high and then you're going to

jump off that box and you're going to do

this as a new thing you'll notice that

anytime you add Ecentric training to

your workout regimen it tends to

increase soreness a lot and often people

get injured by including a new form of

movement in particular form of movement

that you can fall and or not just

falling but by including a lot of

Ecentric movements that they hadn't been

doing previously again be really safe

about this but that loading of the

skeleton through Ecentric movement and

controlling The Descent super important

not just for your body not just to avoid

Falls not just to improve coordination

and a bunch of other great things but

also to get that release of osteocalcin

the improvements in bdnf brain

performance brain health and so on and

I'm guessing that most of you can

probably incorp at these four things

long slow distance high-intensity

interval training some deliberate time

under tension training during your

resistance training again could be done

with body weight doesn't have to even be

done with machines or free weights as

well as some explosive and Ecentric

control training without adding any time

to your existing workout regimen simply

by incorporating it into whatever

workouts you happen to already be doing

and the explosive Ecentric troll

training could be done frankly at the

end of a run you could do it at the end

of your zone two day you could do it on

the end of a hit day whenever you do it

and however you do it just try not to

get injured that's the most important

thing why well it turns out if you get

injured you can't exercise sometimes you

can and it's good to continue exercising

provided you're not aggravating that

injury but a lot of times you can't and

there're actually studies of how quickly

your brain starts to suffer if you don't

exercise now most of these Studies have

been done on very experienced athletes

or people that are exercising a lot and

then are forced to detrain or stop

training completely and in some of these

studies they've done this independent of

anything else it's not like these people

got sick from a you know a cold or flu

and then had to stop training they'll

just have them train a lot and then stop

training and then start to look at some

of the effects that occur within the

brain and the major thing that I was

able to extract from that literature is

that after about 10 days of not doing

any training that is no cardiovascular

training no resistance training you

start to see significant decrements in

brain oxygenation levels as well as some

other markers that are indicative of

brain health or that would be indicative

of brain health if they were to continue

so if you haven't been training at all

for a long period of time your brain is

suffering the good news is you can start

benefiting your brain very quickly by

exercising check out the foundational

Fitness protocol it involves a ramp up

or warming kind of phase because you

don't want to jump into something Whole

Hog if you haven't been doing it at all

if you haven't been exercising at all

you know forget what you did in high

school by the way folks anytime people

tell you back in the day I was so fit

this that that's not the way to think

about it it's about today and what

you're going to do today and forward

okay the past is great it tells you you

had a capacity but you really just want

to take where you are now and try and

improve where you are now going forward

okay the past is the past so how fit you

were in high school or in junior high

school or when you were in the

kindergarten class you were the first

one to make it around to get the blocks

and the cookie and the milk first like

awesome but if you're going to start up

having not exercised in a long long time

think about what you can do now so you

don't get injured because when you get

injured you can't exercise when you

don't exercise for 10 days or more

that's when you start to see decrements

in brain health so if you're not

exercising now it's a great time to get

to it if you are exercising now and you

have to take a week off because of some

sort of illness or injury or family

event or stress look don't obsess over

that don't miss out on some of the key

things of life or make yourself sicker

by exercising and please please please

don't come to the gym sick okay I did a

whole episode on colds and flu and

anytime people are coughing and sneezing

and they tell you they're not contagious

that's completely unsubstantiated by the

scientific data please don't come to the

gym sick so if you had to take a week

off you'll be fine you'll be fine you'll

probably come back stronger in the end

take a couple of days and ramp back up

but after about 10 days your brain

health starts to suffer so that's an

important number to keep in mind okay so

multiple times throughout today's

discussion we've been talking about how

exercise increases arousal arousal

improves brain function that's true you

know what's also true what's also true

is that exercise improves brain health

in the long term yes through the

deployment of things like bdnf yes

through the deployment of things like

osteocalcin and on and on but it also

does so by improving your sleep there

are now many many studies showing that

sleep is the thing that mediates many

not all but many of the positive effects

of exercise on brain performance and

long-term brain health so what this

means is that you have to make sure that

you're getting adequate amounts of sleep

it's not sufficient just to exercise you

need to get proper sleep and I've done

multiple episodes on how to optimize

your sleep how to improve your sleep how

to deal with insomnia shift work if you

want to learn about any and all of that

either from podcast or from our

newsletter go to hubman lab.com put

sleep into the search function and it

will take you to the episodes and the

newsletters that discuss that in

addition if you have a specific issue

with sleep like you're doing shift work

or you're jet lagged or you are

suffering from middle of the night

waking or trouble shifting your schedule

because you want to become an early

riser

put those terms into the search function

it will take you to the specific

timestamps in those episodes so that you

don't have to listen to the entire

episodes because I realize that some of

them are quite long and of course

there's the newsletter on sleep that

lists off the various things that you

should and can be doing to improve your

sleep no matter how well you happen to

be sleeping now but tons and tons of

zero cost resources there in PDF form in

podcast form and on and on we also did

the six episode series on sleep with Dr

Matthew Walker one of the world's

experts in sleep so that's also there so

you can find all that

there one question I get a lot is let's

say I don't sleep that well should I

exercise well the short answer is yes

provided that it was just one night of

poor sleep in fact there are studies

showing that if you're slightly sleep

deprived meaning one night's poor sleep

so most people need somewhere between

six and nine hours of sleep varies by

person varies by age varies by time of

year and so on all discussed in that

series with Matt

Walker most people need six to9 hours

but let's say you normally get eight or

you normally get seven but you're down

two hours on sleep for whatever reason

should you exercise the next morning the

short answer is yes provided it was just

one night of poor sleep it turns out

that exercising after a poor night's

sleep can help offset some of the

negative effects of sleep deprivation on

what on brain performance and health now

you don't want to get into a habit of

this you don't want to get into a habit

of using exercise as a way to compensate

for Sleep loss so if you don't sleep

well for one night exercise is a great

way to offset that sleep loss effect on

the brain or that would otherwise affect

the brain you can compensate for it by

doing some exercise keep in mind you

want to exercise in a way that's not too

intense because you can drive your

immune system down and be more

vulnerable to infections that's

certainly the case after a poor night's

sleep you also want to be really careful

with what you do for that exercise in

terms of your coordinated movement it's

it's much easier to get injured when

you're sleep deprived in fact there's a

really nice set of studies lay Norton's

talked about this elsewhere that the

relationship between sleep or I should

say sleep deprivation and injury is a

strong one and the relationship between

sleep loss and pain and failure to

recover from injury is also a strong one

the direct point being if you're

slightly sleep deprived sure go ahead

and exercise that will actually help you

offset some of the negative effects of

that sleep deprivation but you want to

be careful how you exercise so you don't

get sick and you don't get inured so you

can keep in mind that if you're having

trouble sleeping or even if you're a

great sleeper already getting exercise

will further improve the architecture of

your sleep in fact there's some evidence

that doing high-intensity interval

training can improve the amount of deep

slow wave sleep that you get and there's

some additional data showing that if you

do high-intensity training early in the

day and that's combined with a bunch of

other things that stimulate autonomic

arousal so here we are again at

autonomic arousal things like caffeine

if that's in your program you don't have

to drink caffeine things like getting

bright light in your eyes early in the

day definitely do that don't stare at

the Sun or any light so bright that it's

dangerous or painful to look at but

certainly get bright light in your eyes

all those things that increase autonomic

arousal early in the day can also help

improve the amount and the quality of

sleep that you get at night in

particular rapid ey movement sleep which

is so critical for learning and memory

in fact there's something called the

first night effect which is the amount

and quality of Rapid ey movement sleep

that you get on the first night after

trying to learn something powerfully

dictates whether or not you actually

learn and remember that thing because as

you recall learning and memory

neuroplasticity is a two-step process

you need to be focused and alert during

the encoding phase during the learning

but it's in states of deep rest sleep in

particular but also non-sleep deep rest

but rapid eye movement sleep is the kind

of king of reshaping your brain

connections for the better unloading the

emotional load of experiences that were

troubling that happens during rapid eye

movement sleep just a little bit of REM

deprivation rapid eye movement sleep

deprivation will make you more emotional

and will make the painful experiences of

recent and distant past also more

painful get more rapid eye movement

sleep if you can it also consolidates

learning of things that you want to

remember again exercise early in the day

in particular high-intensity exercise

combined with some of the other things

we just discussed terrific way to

improve the amount and quality of sleep

that you get at night and of course all

of that geysers up to what better brain

health and performance in the short term

and in the long term okay so I listed

off the four types of training that you

absolutely want to include in your

exercise regimen if improving your brain

health and performance is one of your

goals and obviously that should be one

of your goals your brain is your Central

Command Center for your entire brain but

also your body there's a fifth category

of exercise that everyone should include

if one's goal is to have a better and

more resilient and indeed a better

performing brain compared to your age

match controls and to be direct that

fifth category is the one that you

absolutely don't want to do what do I

mean by that well there's an absolutely

beautiful literature about a brain area

I've talked a little bit about this

before in our episode about tenacity and

willpower I've talked about it on a few

other podcasts as well it came up during

the podcast episode that I did with the

one and only David gogins and that brain

area is the anterior mid singulate

cortex the anterior mid singulate cortex

very briefly is a brain area that is

powerfully engaged when we lean into

challenges including physical challenges

but also mental challenges emotional

challenges and we get that I'm going to

push through tenacity and engaging our

willpower now it's remarkable to think

about this brain area this is the brain

area mind you that when my colleague at

Stanford Joe parvey putting a little

electrode into he was doing this for

other reasons related to important

neurosurgeries that patients needed and

stimulated that particular brain area

anterior mid singulate cortex people

reported immediately feeling as if there

was some impending challenge but that

they were going to lean into that

challenge remarkable this brain area has

intense connectivity with many many

other brain areas the dopaminergic

system the so-called arousal system so

multiple brain areas involved in arousal

areas of the brain that are involved in

learning areas of the brain that are

involved in stress areas of the brain

that are involved in lots and lots of

different things it's a major hub for

inputs from other brain areas and

outputs to other brain areas areas but

here's what's most remarkable about the

anterior mid singulate cortex there's a

category of humans referred to as

superagers superagers are people that

defy the aging process at least at the

level of cognition they maintain the

volume of certain brain areas well into

older age when their age match

counterparts are losing the same brain

areas meaning people in their 60s 70s

80s 90s have brain areas that are

shrinking even in cases where people

don't have Alzheimer's dementia areas of

the brain are shrinking superagers are

people that maintain the healthy full

volume of these brain areas and indeed

in some cases the volume the size of

these brain areas continues to increase

into their later years one of the brain

areas that maintains or increases volume

in the superagers is the anterior mid

singulate cortex and there aren't many

other brain areas that do that the

anterior mid singulate cortex is the

main site that can be tacked to this

phenomenon of super aging now super

aging and super agers is a bit of a

misnomer because what's happening in

these people is they're not just holding

on to the volume of their anterior mid

singulate cortex they're also

maintaining healthy cognition which is

flexible strategy context dependent

learning their memory their working

memory they're doing phenomenally well

not just for their age but even compared

to some much younger people so these

super agers are really interesting both

for sake of what they can do into their

later years and because their anterior

mid singulate cortex is holding on to

its size and in some cases increasing

its

size what can allow you to activate and

increase the size of your anterior mid

singulate cortex well it's very simple

to do things that you don't want to do I

should be very clear we're talking about

things that can be done safely that

aren't going to damage you physically or

psychologically but we are talking about

exercise or in some cases cognitive

exercise but today we're talking about

physical exercise that you would much

rather not do so if you're like me and

you love resistance training it can be

hard right some days I want to do it

more than others and sometimes the

workouts are much harder than others but

I love it but if I want to maintain and

increase the size of my anterior mid

singulate cortex I absolutely have to

find some form of physical exercise that

I would much rather not do but as I

mentioned before that's also safe

physically and that's not going to

damage me emotionally I don't know what

kind of physical exercise would damage

me emotionally but you get the point

this brain area has been explored in a

number of different studies so

successful dieters increase the size of

their interor mid singulate cortex

people that fail to reach a goal a diet

goal or other goal experience a

shrinking of their interor mid singulate

cortex there's also examples of physical

exercise increasing anterior mid

singulate

cortex skill challenges and on and on

the important point is that the anterior

mid singulate cortex is agnostic with

respect to what you do except that it

has to be something that you don't want

to do if you want to build and maintain

its size and that building and

maintaining of the anterior mid

singulate cortex size size is strongly

correlated it's not necessarily causal

but it's strongly correlated with this

super aging

phenomenon there's a wonderful review

about the anterior mid singulate cortex

that was authored by none other than

Lisa Feldman Barrett she came up earlier

in this episode she's a world-class

researcher on the topic of emotions and

the basis of emotions Etc the title of

this paper is the tenacious brain how

the anterior mid singulate cortex

contributes to achieving goals and

there's one figure in this paper I just

want to summarize a couple of things

from because it's just like a wow figure

there aren't many figures like this I

mean this is a review article so this

figure includes panels pooling from a

bunch of different studies but I'm going

to just highlight a few of these by

paraphrasing what's in the figure Legend

okay so bear with me here I think you'll

find this very interesting okay so you

can't see the pictures because many

people are listening to this on audio

but you can certainly look up the paper

we provide a link to it in the show note

captions but these points are worth

paying attention to spontaneous anter

mid singulate cortex activity predicts

grit this psychological phenomenon that

we refer to as grit now this is teased

out in a study of grit grit is this

ability to lean into Challenge and the

mere spontaneous activity right not

evoked activity there's spontaneous

activity which is the activity that

occurs sort of naturally as a

consequence of engaging in a particular

thought pattern or behavior and then

there's evoked activity when you

stimulate a brain area this is

spontaneous activity spontaneous enter

mid singulate activity is associated

with the psychological phenomenon the

verb that we call grit and grit can be

thought of as an adjective right

somebody's really gritty but it should

best be thought of as a verb it's the

Leaning into to challenge greater

anterior mid singulate cortex activity

is associated with higher levels of

persistence this again was teased out in

a study of persistence so these aren't

just philosophical statements or

theoretical statements these are based

on brain Imaging studies where people

are being challenged with a particular

set of challenges while they're in a

so-called fmri functional magnetic

resonance imaging machine activation of

the anterior mid singulate cortex is

associated with grit and with

persistence and anterior mid singulate

signal is associated with willingness to

exert more effort if people have to

exert more effort and they're willing to

do that boom anterior mid singulate

cortex activity goes up also anterior

mid singulate activity increases get

this during effort magnitude estimation

even when people are just trying to

gauge how much effort something's going

to take that starts to initiate activity

of the anterior mid singulate cortex the

oh boy this is going to be a big one I

got to do this and I'll explain how I

engage my anid singulate cortex you'll

have to decide if that's something that

you hate enough so that you can use it

too almost done here folks Anor mid

singulate signal tracks the subjective

value of effort exerted as people start

to track how much effort they're

exerting aner mid singulate cortex

activity goes

up and last but not least anterior mid

singulate cortex stimulation so this is

no longer spontaneous activity but

stimulation increases the will to

persevere incredible never

before meaning never before reading this

article and learning about anid

singulate cortex which again is largely

the consequence of work done somewhere

between the years of 2010 and now

2025 did we even understand what the

anterior mid singulate cortex is there

for and is doing it could do other

things too but this is an extraordinary

set of findings and an extraordinary

brain structure that everyone should

know about and that's why number five on

that list if you want to improve brain

function and brain health over time is

to do something you really don't want to

do something really challenging both

psychologically challenging and

physically challenging at least once per

week make sure it's safe psychologically

and physically but do that thing for me

I must confess it's deliberate cold

exposure but it's deliberate cold

exposure under particular conditions

I'll be the first to say that I love

getting into the ice bath or the cold

plunge or taking a cold shower after

I've been in a hot sauna for 20 or 30

minutes or after a long run where I'm

sweating and I want to cool off or on a

hot summer day but most of the time

that's not the case meaning most of the

time when I do deliberate cold exposure

and sometimes I'll do it by cold shower

which by the way is zero cost it'll even

save you on your heating bill so you

don't need to buy any equipment or you

could do a cold Plunge or an ice bath

but you don't need one most of the time

when I even think about getting into the

cold plunge or taking a cold shower that

is very likely increasing my anterior

mid singulate cortex activity because I

love love love the heat I love sauna I'm

very heat adapted I'm comfortable at

very high temperatures in the

sauna I don't hate the cold but I close

to hate the cold so for me the First

wall to get over the first bit of

resistance that's really hard for me to

get over is to walk towards the cold

plunge then it's to take the lid off

then it's to look at the thing then it's

to get in but I force myself to do it I

make sure that I do it safely and I make

sure that I do it for about 1 to three

minutes sometimes longer but I do it

because yes deliberate cold exposure

increases release of the so-called

catacol amines dopamine epinephrine nor

epinephrine also yes I know that those

catacol amines are going to make me feel

much better after I get out of the Cal

plunge for many many hours that's been

established but I also do deliberate

cold exposure by cold shower or by Cold

immersion because I hate it and because

I know that by doing it I'm going to be

activating my will to persevere my grit

my willpower now today's discussion is

not about deliberate cold exposure it's

about exercise so what I've started

doing in recent months and I'm certainly

going to continue into

2025 is to start adding some form of

exercise that I absolutely don't want to

do in order to activate my interor mid

singulate cortex now for me because my

schedule is very full I'm already doing

six workouts per week again some of them

are shorter some of them are longer I

don't have a lot of extra time to

exercise I don't have a lot of time to

start rolling Jiu-Jitsu for a couple

hours a week which I wouldn't loath but

there's a big barrier for me to do that

sort of thing so maybe it's perfect for

activating amcc anterior mid singulate

cortex rather what I've decided to do is

to include the one thing that I've been

putting off for years that frankly I may

enjoy down the line but that I don't

enjoy currently and that's to do some

sort of really coordinated specific

motor activity that has to be done

precisely or very precisely before you

can say that you've quote unquote done

it right and for me the thing that I'm

selecting because I already like to jump

rope and I can do a few different things

with a jump rope I'm not super skilled

but I can already jump rope is something

that my friend Mark Bell exposed me to

which is this rope flow Thing feel free

to laugh if you want but this stuff is

hard and it's really really cool the

Rope flow involves just taking a rope

okay there may be specific commercial

brands of these but I was told I can

just use a kind of thick rope that you

buy at the hardware store or like a dog

leash type rope and you can look this up

online we'll provide a link to it

there's a specific pattern of moving the

Rope where you're not actually jumping

through it so it's not jumping rope but

you're actually moving it in front of

and behind your body and from side to

side and involves a lot of different

shifting from one limb to the other in

very deliberate ways and as I'm

discussing this I realized that I really

don't want to do this but I know it's

going to be very useful for me which is

exactly why I'm going to use it in

2025 to enhance my anterior mid

singulate cortex activity the only fear

being that I'm going to start to like it

and then I'll have to find something

else to engage my anterior mid singulate

cortex and perhaps at that point I'll

look to you guys in the comment sections

to figure out what sorts of exercise I

would hate the most in order to make

sure that I'm getting my anterior mid

singulate cortex activation because yes

increased coordination is great who

wouldn't want that but mainly because I

want to improve my brain performance and

brain function both in the short term

and over time so if you want in the

comment section on YouTube because

that's where I can see the comments best

or perhaps on Spotify as well where they

now have a comment section I guess apple

has a comment section too YouTube apple

or Spotify put in the comment section

the form of exercise that both

psychologically and physically safe for

you to

embrace but that you would loathe to do

and that you're going to perhaps no not

perhaps that you're going to commit to

doing in

2025 and then we can compare and

contrast and we can all see which one

ones we hate the most and then we can

exchange which exercises we hate the

most and everyone can laugh at us for

doing these things that we hate and yet

we'll be the ones laughing because our

an mid singulate cores will be nice and

plump well into our old ages and

everybody else will be wondering where

the comment section is thank you

everybody for joining me for today's

discussion all about how exercise can be

leveraged to improve brain health and

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