{"id":8930,"date":"2021-10-29T09:53:09","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T09:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/superslowzone.com\/louis\/?p=8930"},"modified":"2022-03-25T10:04:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T10:04:20","slug":"grow-new-brain-cells-intermittent-fasting-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/superslowzone.com\/louis\/grow-new-brain-cells-intermittent-fasting-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"Grow New Brain Cells – Intermittent Fasting & Exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read an interesting neurological study recently, about mice, exercise and intermittent fasting.<\/p>\n

But to be honest, I probably wouldn\u2019t have shared it if I hadn\u2019t dug deeper into what the main author had previously researched\u2014and how she believes there\u2019s some really good news about our brains<\/strong><\/span> that we were probably raised to believe was not possible.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s tell the whole story the way I found it. It comes to us\u00a0from King’s College London, where researchers wanted to figure out if intermittent fasting and exercise would spur the development of new hippocampal neurons, and\u00a0thus improve memory performance\u00a0in lab mice.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Their experiment ran three months and focused on brain genes known as Klotho. Researchers divided the mice into three groups:<\/p>\n

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  1. A control group of mice who were fed as they normally had been,<\/li>\n
  2. A calorie-restricted group (CR), that had its daily food intake reduced by 10%, and<\/li>\n
  3. An intermittent fasting group (IF), that had its food similarly reduced but was fed only every other day during the study.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In the end, the mice in the \u201cIF\u201d group (#3 above) had “improved long-term memory retention compared to the other groups,” according to a university press release<\/a>. “When the brains of these mice were studied, it was apparent that the Klotho gene was upregulated, and neurogenesis increased compared to those that were on the CR diet.”<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    The study ran in the journal,\u00a0Molecular Psychiatry<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    “Our results demonstrate that Klotho … plays a central role in adult neurogenesis,” said Dr. Sandrine Thuret, who leads the Adult Neurogenesis & Mental Health Laboratory at King’s College, “and suggests that ‘IF’ is an effective means of improving long-term memory retention in humans.”<\/p>\n

    OK, kind of interesting, sure, but these are mice. However, I was prompted to do a bit of \u201cetymologizing\u201d and researching and putting my very non-scientific degrees to work on figuring out what the heck \u201cadult neurogenesis<\/em>\u201d means.<\/p>\n

    It turns out that what it means is that something I had been taught and took as settled:<\/p>\n

    In short, I\u2019d always understood that the brain was one of the few parts of the body that can’t regenerate.<\/p>\n

    Not so at all, says Thuret, who prior to doing this mice research gave a TED Talk on the subject<\/a> called, quite literally: You can grow new brain cells. Here’s how<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    Watch Thuret’s TED Talk here: https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/sandrine_thuret_you_can_grow_new_brain_cells_here_s_how?language=en<\/a><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    This is a fairly\u00a0new science and Thuret makes clear in her TED Talk by describing how she introduced the subject to a colleague who is a medical doctor, and who had never heard of it. <\/span><\/p>\n

    But by the time you turn 50 years old, Thuret says, your brain has regenerated to the point that all of the original neurons you were born with have been exchanged for newer, “adult-born neurons.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

    Thus, the context in which this \u201chey,<\/span><\/em> let\u2019s see how mice do when we only feed them every other day<\/span><\/em>\u201d research was conducted is that researchers are trying to figure out if there are things that people can do to spur their growth and regeneration.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Sure enough, Thuret says, there\u00a0are natural activities that encourage and discourage neurogenesis [new brain cells], such as:<\/strong><\/p>\n